YVETTE GELLIS

1,000 WAYS TO SEE IT


SEPTEMBER 13 – OCTOBER 17, 2014

OPENING RECEPTION:
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2014, 6 – 8 PM

GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY is pleased to welcome the creative takeover of artist Yvette Gellis in an exhibition called 1,000 Ways to See It. This marks her second solo exhibition with the gallery.

The gallery is completely transformed from all sides by Gellis’ interactive painting, and can even be observed through peekholes outside the gallery, aiding the viewer in seeing through the walls, and directly into the painting itself from all sides. Multiple vantage points and floating painted transparent panels provide dozens of different angles to view the same subject, the same painting—painted 1000 different ways.

Yvette Gellis is known for her intense and experimental paintings and installations that bring the two-dimensional experience of a painting into a three-dimensional world. Building on her recent artist residency in France, her new body of work and transformative gallery installation expands upon the idea of using space and environment to transcend the flat surface of traditional painting bringing her powerful mark-making off the canvas. With floating marks in space, three-dimensional paint growing from the floor up, and multiple vantage points, Gellis’ installation forces the viewer to play with the notion of perception from multiple perspectives.

“The installation is an outgrowth of my practice as a painter,” she says. “It is about painting. Painting that fills space almost like sculpture.” Gellis wants to break apart the visual world, turning the static imagery of a painting into a three-dimensional event. She wants visitors to interact with the work on many levels.

YVETTE GELLIS

YVETTE GELLIS
     
     
     

The driving force behind her concept and installation stems from the impermanence of matter and object, matching with the ephemeral and everlasting energy that resides within each being or object. She is fascinated with the memory of objects and places and trying to extract the meaningful core away from the material. She creates work by utilizing the space within and around the subject as an immersive frame, heightening the viewer’s awareness of the mind-body experience as a whole. ”There is something happening in the very atoms and molecules around us and my work is meant to expand upon the idea that as souls we are more than the matter that disappears, dissolves or decays.”

The inspiration for this installation came from her experience with the architecture in France. Seen from so many angles, over and over again during her residency, Gellis became transfixed by old chateaus and churches she encountered. She imagined the hundreds of years the buildings lived and interacted with people, providing thousands of perceived images to those who used them or just passed by them over the years. As the structure decays and changes, perceptions are invented and re-invented—in one structure’s lifespan there are thousands of ways for it to be seen. Gellis embodies this timeless notion of life and death in these meaningful places.

An opening reception for Yvette Gellis' 1,000 Ways to See It will take place at Garboushian Gallery on Saturday, September 13, 2014 from 6:00 to 8:00 pm. The exhibition will remain on view until October 17, 2014

ABOUT YVETTE GELLIS:
Gellis received her M.F.A. in 2008 from Claremont Graduate University. Recent Solo exhibitions include CAMAC, Marnay-sur-Seine, France, Paint House in Tainan, Taiwan, The East / Gate Museum and The Licence Gallery in Taipei, Taiwan, The Garboushian Gallery, Beverly Hills, Conflux City festival in New York City, The Brunnhofer Galerie in Austria, and The Kim Light/LIGHTBOX Gallery.

Selected group shows include “Pretty Vacant,”Westwood, LA , Fellows of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Torrance Art Museum, The Cerritos College Art Gallery, LA, Toomey-Tourell, San Francisco, MBA Museum of Biblical Art Dallas, Texas. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Villenaux-La-Grande, France, Vienna and Linz, Austria.

American artist Yvette Gellis lives and works in Los Angeles, California and is represented by Garboushian Gallery.