1. Early life and education

2. Early work

3. Work
     Pods    Monoliths    Slabs  

4. Museum exhibitions
    2019  2018  2017  2016  2015  2014  2013 

5. Collections

6. References

7. External links

Colon is best known for meticulously creating light-activated sculptures through industrial and technological processes. She is one of the few women working in the Light and Space and Finish/Fetish movements. Recognized as a successor and legatee of California Minimalism and the Light and Space movements, Colon has exhibited her work alongside veterans of these movements such as Robert Irwin, Larry Bell, DeWain Valentine, Peter Alexander, Helen Pashgian and Mary Corse.^{[7][8][9][10][11][12]} Her use of color, shapes and internal layering is considered "assertively feminist," ^[8] and "grounded in Minimalism."^[13] Her work has been compared to earlier male artists like Craig Kaufman, Dewain Valentine, Doug Wheeler, and Peter Alexander for her use of materials and light as medium;^[7][8] however, as pointed out in ArtForum, "Colon's labors are very much her own...Her employ of industrial materials and techniques thus structurally redoubles an earlier industry-driven technophilia, even as she eschews her predecessor's penchant for outsourcing production."^[7] Colon's technologically innovative sculptures led to her to being named one of "The Most Powerful Women in LA's Arts Scene" in June 2015, identifying her as part of the new cultural vanguard in Los Angeles.^[14] In May 2016, Colon was identified as an "Art Star" in issue 113 of Coagula Magazine, and her portrait by Eric Minh Swenson was included in the Art Star exhibition at the Museum of Art and History, Lancaster.^[15]

Early life and education

Colon was born in Vancouver, Canada, in 1966 to a German mother and Puerto Rican father. Her mother was a painter who studied languages and art at the University of Edmonton, Alberta, and her father was a scientist who obtained a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. She was raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico since the age of one, and attended the University of Puerto Rico, graduating magna cum laude in 1987 with a BA in Economics, after receiving a 1986 Congressional Scholarship Award by the Harry S. Truman Foundation.^[16] Colon moved to Los Angeles in 1987 to pursue graduate studies, receiving a Juris Doctorate degree from the Southwestern University School of Law in 1990.

Early work

Colon began her career as a painter, exhibiting abstract works from 2005 through 2011. Colon's early influence included Carlos Cruz-Diez and Jesus Rafael Soto, amongst others. Her paintings also showed the influence of artists associated with "Light and Space" in Los Angeles such as Ron Davis and Craig Kauffman.^[17] In 2012, Colon moved away from painting into sculpture, focusing on perceptual phenomena, an interest she shares with other members of the Los Angeles-based Light and Space movement. Colon's friendship with mentor De Wain Valentine, and the writings of Donald Judd and Robert Irwin, generated a shift in her work increasing towards issues of visual perception and materiality, which led to the creation of her plastic sculptures body of work.^[18]

Work

Colon's oeuvre encompasses several distinct sculptural forms: Pods, Slabs, and Monoliths. The through-line in all of Colon's work is the concept of the "mutable object." Influenced by Donald Judd's ideas and writings, such as his seminal essay "Specific Objects" (1964, published 1965), Colon refers to her works as "non-specific objects" to highlight their deliberate fluid indeterminacy. The sculptures are conceived as "non-specific objects" that transmute their physical qualities through fluctuating movement, varied lighting, changing environmental conditions, and the passage of time.^[4][5]

Pods

Colon produces incandescent sculptures generally referred to as "Pods." In 2012 Colon began working with plastics, developing a unique fabrication process of blow-molding and layering various acrylic materials. This industrial process creates dynamic sculptures that fluctuate in appearance, emanating light and color inherently from within. The Pods shift color and form before the viewers' eyes depending on lighting, and the viewers' choice of location.^[8][5]

Christopher Knight, art critic for the LA Times writes, "Sleek sculptural objects with misty, mercurial surfaces and at least partial inspiration from aerospace technology have not lost their appeal in more than half a century. In Los Angeles, first there was Craig Kauffman, then Helen Pashgian and now Gisela Colon…..Colon's wall-bound " pods" [are created] in a variety of whimsical, organic shapes — lozenges, softened trapezoids and freeform globules — as if conceived with a kid's giant bubble wand. Most sport a multicolored nucleus made from layers of colored plastics, which glows brightly if mysteriously within the paler milky form."^[2]

In describing Colon's work in the historical context of California Minimalism and Light & Space movements, critic Dr. Suzanne Hudson states, "Colon's 'Glo-Pods,' 2013—, irregularly shaped wall mounted acrylic orbs, recall the languid organicism of Craig Kauffman's candy-colored bubbles; their intimation of light emanating from within the impossibly smooth contours additionally channels Helen Pashgian's illuminated monoliths. Unlike Pashgian's plinths, or Doug Wheeler's neon-backlit canvases, Colon's scarab-like objects achieve their iridescence via the play of natural light, yet the sculptures appear to change color as one moves around them, as if lit by multihued bulbs.Perhaps more to the broader point, Colon's labors are very much her own…"^[7]

Art critic Mat Gleason explained: "Rather than have some technological trick embedded into the art, [Colon] has made objects that are altered by the world around them yet never stop being themselves. This artist has thus delivered a meditation on the flexibility of the feminine as antidote to the rigidity of the masculine."^[8]

Critic Steven Biller has stated that: "Without question, Colon's approach to shaping, forming, and coloring is advancing the trajectory of the resurgent Light and Space / Finish Fetish movement."^[19]

In her essay "Notes, Thoughts, Observations Towards the Development, Conceptualization and Creation of Non-Specific Objects," Colon refers to her plastic sculptures "non-specific objects," further explaining, that "Non-Specificity [is] a quality brought about by the inherent mutability of the object."^[20]

Art writer and biographer Hunter Drohojowska-Philp describes this phenomenon: "When the most recent iterations of the Glo-Pods are mounted on a white wall, the 'inherent mutability,' so desired as an effect by Colon, is indisputable. Depending on the combination of artificial and natural lighting, the colors slip and slide like an oil slick on water. Further alterations are apparent as a viewer approaches the work. Among the many shifts, in a single work, pale aqua can turn to lavender and appear to melt within the form. At close proximity, the focus shifts to the frosty surface, as though one were looking through a white cocoon to the pupa within. At a greater distance, the pupa can seem to vibrate with the growing intensity of its perceived colors. There is no there, there: no singular location in which one can grasp all the implications of a single work."^[21]

Monoliths

Colon creates large-scale floor-based sculptures called "Monoliths," 12-foot tall vertical singular-form sculptures, engineered with aerospace technology, possessing no lines, corners, edges, or demarcations, conceived as pure form to denote clarity and aesthetic purity.^[5] The Monoliths have "allusive shimmering surfaces" that have been described as "phallic shaped pieces," "ambiguous works that defy categorization. The pieces have a presence and a resonance, and Colon succeeds in fashioning unsolvable optical illusions that inspire wonder far beyond their formal properties." ^[22]

Representing a new direction for Colon, the Monolith sculptures are 12-foot-tall iridescent pillars that "succeed in providing viewers with a dramatic perceptual experience...Radiant, elegant and pristine, [they] manage to be both strong and sensuous.^[23]

The first Monolith of this series, created in 2016, is in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

In 2017 Colon created the Parabolic Monolith, a monumental sculptural form towering 15 feet high, described by art critic Christopher Knight, "like the flattened nose-cones of an airplane or science-fiction starship….Undeniably eye-catching, these giant luxury objects press technological craftsmanship to an extreme degree."^[2]

Slabs

In 2017 Colon developed a series of standing sculptures referred to as "Light Slabs," 8-feet tall works with a light-activated core rendered in translucent acrylic and polished stainless steel. The combination of disparate materials creates a duality of perceptual phenomena. The Slabs have been described as "sublime sculptures that resonate with color and light. Mysterious and magical…. they emit, reflect and refract light…feel otherworldly and seems to emanate a powerful life force. The metallic colors shift as the viewer circles it, much like the wall pods mutate in response to shifting points of view or changes in the light….These works aspire to be the opposite of fixed and static; they are shape-shifting, non-linear, non-specific objects. Working from a vocabulary of minimalist geometric forms, Colon achieves glowing, timeless objects of beauty." ^[23]

Museum exhibitions

2019

• "Plastic Entanglements: Ecology, Aesthetics, Materials," Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin (September 13, 2019 – January 5, 2020)
• "Plastic Entanglements: Ecology, Aesthetics, Materials," Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts (February 8–July 28, 2019)
• "Pods," Hilliard Art Museum, Lafayette, Louisiana (January - August 2019) (Solo Exhibition)

2018

• "Pods," Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, Missouri (September - December 2018) (Solo Exhibition)
• "Plastic Entanglements: Ecology, Aesthetics, Materials," Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, Oregon (September - December 2018)
• "Pods," South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, South Dakota (March 2 - July 8, 2018) (Solo Exhibition)
• "Plastic Entanglements: Ecology, Aesthetics, Materials," Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania (Feb - June 2018)

2017

• "Pods," San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, San Angelo, Texas (December 15, 2017 - February 4, 2018) (Solo Exhibition)
• "California Dreaming: Contemporary Art From the Weisman Foundation," Fredrick R. Weisman Museum of Art, Pepperdine University, Malibu, California, August 29 - December 10, 2017
• "California Connections: Selections from the Museum Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD)," The California Center for the Arts Museum, Escondido, California, July 7 - August 27, 2017
• "Permanent Collection," Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California, June - September 2017
• "Trans-Angeles: Crossover Experimentation," Neuer Kunstverein, Aschaffenburg, Germany (May 14 - July 9, 2017)
• "Pods," Museum of Arts and Sciences (MAS), Macon, Georgia (March 3, 2017 - June 11, 2017) (Solo Exhibition)^[24]

2016

• "Past/Present/Future," Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, Michigan (September 2016)
• "Pods," Castellani Art Museum, Niagara, New York (August 21, 2016 - February 12, 2017) (Solo Exhibition)
• "Trans-Angeles: Crossover Experimentation," Chabot Museum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (March 19, 2016 - June 5, 2016)
• "Pods," International Museum of Art & Science (IMAS), McAllen, Texas (April 14, 2016 - August 7, 2016) (Solo Exhibition)^[25]

2015

• "Pods," The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio (September 13, 2015 -March 31, 2016) (Solo Exhibition)^[26]
• "Artrageous," Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, California

2014

• "Colorimetry," Museum of Art & History (MOAH), Lancaster, California
• "Trans-Angeles: Crossover Experimentation," Kunstmuseum Wilhelm-Morgner Haus, Soest, Germany, April 2014

2013

• "Pods," Museum of Art & History (MOAH), Lancaster, California (Solo Exhibition)

Collections

• The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio
• Castellani Art Museum, Niagara, New York
• Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, Michigan
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
• Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, California
• Museum of Art & History, Lancaster, CA
• Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego, California
• Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, California
• The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation
• The Jarl Mohn Family Foundation
• Michael Strauss Foundation
• Beth Rudin DeWoody

References

External links

• Official website

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