Gisela Colon

Background

Gisela Colon was born on July 30, 1966 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to a German mother and Puerto Rican father. She was raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico since the age of one.

Education

Gisela received her Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Puerto Rico in 1987 and Juris Doctor from Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles in 1990.

Career

Colon began her career as a painter, exhibiting abstract works from 2005 to 2011. In 2012, Colon moved into sculpture, focusing on perceptual phenomena. Colon’s friendship with mentor DeWain Valentine, and the ideas and practices of Robert Irwin, James Turrell, Larry Bell, John McCracken, Doug Wheeler, amongst others, generated a conceptual shift in her work increasing her interest in issues of visual perception, and materiality, which led to the creation of her sculptural bodies of work. Colon's sculptural practice of generating interplay between light, perception, and lucid materiality embodies the ideals and the evolving investigations of the California Light and Space movement.

Colon's art also has been influenced by Minimalism, particularly the writings and work of Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Agnes Martin, amongst others. Taking a cue from Donald Judd’s notion of “specific objects”, Colon has dubbed her own works “non-specific objects” to highlight their deliberate fluid indeterminacy. Originally from Puerto Rico, Colon's work is also the product of cross-cultural influences. Her oeuvre encompasses several distinct sculptural forms: Pods, Slabs, Monoliths, and Portals. The through-line in all of Colon's work is the concept of the "mutable object", the sculptures are conceived as variable objects that transmute their physical qualities through fluctuating movement, varied lighting, changing environmental conditions, and the passage of time.

Gisela’s sculpture is in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The Perez Art Museum Miami, The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown; the Castellani Art Museum, Niagara; the Grand Rapids Museum of Art, Grand Rapids; the Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs; the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach; and the Fredrick R. Weisman Foundation.

Achievements

• 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.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Liquid Triangle Glo-Pod (Blue Green)

  • Oval Melt Glo-Pod (Iridescent Green)

  • Slab Glo-Pod (Iridescent Blue)

  • Dome Melt Glo-Pod (Iridescent Orange)

  • Rectangle Torque Glo-Pod (Iridescent Red)

  • Morph Glo-Pod (Iridescent Green)

  • Square (Iridescent White)

  • Oval Melt Pod (Hot Pink/Orange/Creamsicle)

  • Slab Glo-Pod (Iridescent Green Blue)

  • Rectangle Torque Glo-Pod (Iridescent Hot Red/Pink)

Views

Quotations: "Non-Specificity [is] a quality brought about by the inherent mutability of the object."

Membership

Gisela Colon was the member of Light and Space movement.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• 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.

Interests

• Artists

  Donald Judd, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Jesus Rafael Soto

Connections

Friend:

De Wain Valentine

References

• Gisela Colón : pods
  2015