Liz Atz and Gelah Penn: Splice
Curated by Eileen Jeng Lynch
The Yard: City Hall Park
116 Nassau Street, Floors 5 & 6
New York, NY 10038
November 22, 2019 – November 6, 2020
Opening reception: Friday, November 22, 6 – 8 pm
Viewing hours: Monday – Friday, 9:30 am – 5 pm (check in with community manager on floor 5) and by appointment.
Contact eileen@neumeraki.com
From left: Liz Atz, Silt Up, 2019, ink on Hypro paper, 24 x 18 inches, courtesy of the artist. Gelah Penn, Sluice #2, 2019, lenticular plastic, Mylar, vinyl, plastic garbage bags, Velcro, staples, polyester mesh, eyelets, T-pins, 48 x 11 1/2 x 4 3/4 inches, courtesy of the artist.
Neumeraki is pleased to present Splice, featuring works by Liz Atz and Gelah Penn. Atz and Penn create layered, abstract works that expand our understanding of drawing, painting, and sculpture. Employing disparate materials—including ink, acrylic, Velcro, plastics and staples—each artist constructs pieces that hover between ambiguity and the familiar. Capturing movements and moments in time, they also transform our perception of space.
Atz densely layers lines and geometric shapes in her works on paper, prints, paintings, sculptures, and video. The layers of lines, forms, and color overlap more sparingly in Penn’s drawings, sculptures, and installations. In both, distinct elements and mediums are spliced to form an elusive whole. Their processes also resonate with choreography. Atz’s video depicting an animation of lines with sound was created in collaboration with a choreographer, focusing on the pointe shoe. In Penn’s work, the artist “aim[s] to choreograph events of perceptual incident.”
Atz’s recent ink drawings portray cataclysms of gesture and color ranging from the vibrant to the monochromatic. While her earlier work and some recent pieces comprise urethane, ink and plastic on backlight film, Atz is moving in a new direction, employing more organic materials as well as recycling older work. Her new sculptures comprise oyster mushroom mycelium with some synthetic fibers, and the prints utilize the mycelium molds.
Through slicing, tearing and layering lightweight synthetic materials, Penn creates work that responds to a particular site and plays with light and the juxtaposition of object and image. Employing a limited color palette, Penn examines the translucency, opacity, and shadows formed by each piece of optical plastic, Mylar, garbage bag, mosquito netting, mesh, or vinyl. The placement of each staple, T-pin, and piece of Velcro is both considered and intuitive. Inspired by film noir, Penn sees her abstractions as “evok[ing] narratives ranging from the theatrical to the forensic.”
Over the years, the work of both these artists has evolved in materiality and form through a rigorous distillation process. Their works explore the dichotomies of connection and fragmentation, resonance and dissonance, modesty and excessiveness.
About the Artists
Liz Atz’s exhibitions have taken place at Norte Maar, Brooklyn, NY; Small Black Door, Ridgewood, NY; AIRPLANE, Brooklyn, NY; Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL; Lesley Heller Workspace (now Gallery), New York, NY; ARTlab 33, Miami, FL; and The Scripps Research Institute, Jupiter, FL, among others. Atz received her MFA in painting and drawing from Temple University and BFA in painting from The Ohio State University. She also participated in an Exchange Study program in Printmaking at the Norwich School of Art and Design in England. Atz was an Instructor and Visiting Assistant Professor at Florida Atlantic University in the Department of Art and Art History, Boca Raton, FL as well as Co-director and Co-curator at AIRPLANE gallery. Atz teaches at Pratt Institute, Pace University and SUNY. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
lizatz.com
@lizatz
Gelah Penn’s exhibition venues include ICEHOUSE Project Space, Sharon, CT; ODETTA, New York, NY; Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA; SUNY Old Westbury, Old Westbury, NY; Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME; National Academy Museum, New York, NY; and Bibliotheque Municipale Louis Nucera, Nice, France, among others. Her work is in the collections of the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Columbus Museum, Columbus, GA; Brooklyn Museum Library, Brooklyn, NY; and Gund Library/Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH. Penn received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA, and also studied at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA and the University of Maryland, College Park, MD. The artist lives and works in Connecticut and New York City.
gelahpenn.com
@gelahpenn
Neumeraki
Founded in 2016 by Eileen Jeng Lynch, Neumeraki collaborates with artists, organizations, and galleries on curatorial, consulting, writing, and editing projects. Jeng Lynch works with artists on career growth and development and has curated exhibitions in galleries and nonprofit institutions, including LMAKbooks+design, Sperone Westwater, Lesley Heller Workspace, Dorsky Gallery Curatorial Programs, Garis & Hahn, and Radiator Gallery. Jeng Lynch is also the Curator of Visual Arts at Wave Hill, where she organizes solo exhibitions by emerging artists for the Sunroom Project Space, co-curates shows in Glyndor Gallery, and is involved in all aspects of visual arts programming.
neumeraki.com
@eileenj8
The Yard
Founded in 2011 by Morris Levy and Richard Beyda, The Yard is a revolutionary, shared office space that allows driven professionals to work together in an innovative community. The Yard provides month-to-month memberships for private offices, private desks, and co-working spaces in 14 designed locations in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. The community comprises more than 2,000 companies and thousands of members across all locations. Members have access to state-of-the-art conference rooms, beautiful breakout lounges, monthly networking events, rotating art gallery installations, and hundreds of business amenities.
theyard.com
@theyard