Galen Gibson-Cornell: Tinker Tailor

Galen Gibson-Cornell studio view, Philadelphia
 

Galen Gibson-Cornell: Tinker Tailor
Bertrand Productions
4500 Worth Street, Philadelphia, PA

By EDWARD WAISNIS November 5, 2024

With his training and early career firmly planted in printmaking Galen Gibson-Cornell’s current work bares comparisons to the Pattern and Decoration practitioners (Kim MacConnel *, et. al.). Similarities include the plumbing of commercially printed materials for the purposes of high art; mass-produced fabrics for MacConnel and company, appropriated ’street’ posters for Gibson-Cornell. His choice of materials lends an easier, more apt, alignment to the orbit of Mimmo Rotella and the Affichistes–most prominently Raymond Hains and Jacques Villeglé–artists who showed a proclivity and proficiency in manipulating the torn poster elevating it from detritus to deification. Additionally, there is something of the texture found in the street photography of Aaron Siskind that captured graffiti and poster emblazoned surfaces in all their curling chipping paint and wheat pasted glory; picturing this grit in nearly three dimensionality. The juxtaposition deviates with Siskind’s fitting alignment with Ab-Ex while Gibson-Cornell hews to his roots in craft and by downplaying the structure of graphic design in favor of pattern with peeks of figuration. To this aspect, I posit that another appeal of the nouveau-realists sentiment for Gibson-Cornell is the ability to pull the figure, and the visage, into the work through the means of readymade images, thus alleviating the necessity of drawing, or painting. Allusions to the real allows the tenets of abstraction to hold court over explication.

Galen Gibson-Cornell, Tom Ford, 2024, found street-posters from New York City and metallic fabric, sliced and woven; thread, zippers, magnets, 76 x 62 x 6 inches

The following statement made by the artist contributes to an understanding of the route of influence he has experienced to arrive at his present working methods: “I was traveling in France and saw some photographs in an historical archive that showed Liberation day in WW2,  and there were photos of people ripping down propaganda posters, etc. That was striking to me, not least because some of the walls in the photographs still stand today, and have street posters on them now!   I was struck by the “archaeology” of all the history in printed poster form that must have been glued to city walls over time.”.

Galen Gibson-Cornell wearing street-poster suit, Budapest, 2014

Gibson-Cornell has taken his ‘processed’ work back to the street in the form of a suits that he has worn while striding New York and Budapest avenues. In an earlier incarnation, a decade ago in the Hungarian capital, Gibson-Cornell resembled some sort of street-grubby Teutonic knight traversing the sooty Kafkaesque boulevards. More recently he has appeared in a fittingly dapper rendition befitting trendy enclaves of New York City, with its predominance of commerce supplanting the Agitprop air of it’s European forerunner.

Galen Gibson-Cornell wearing street-poster suit, New York City, 2024
 

In another ‘action, carried out during his time in Budapest, Gibson-Cornell attempted to pull down every copy of an upcoming English DJs show, subsequently re-installing them in a gallery space on the day of the show.  Gibson-Cornell reassures that the Jon Hopkins show sold out.

After making various forms of work utilizing torn posters, Gibson-Cornell arrived at his now signature weaving technique around 2016, finding it “was just by far the richest way to work”. ** Turning the focus away from the strictly graphically pictorial, Gibson-Cornell brings vibration and a sense of movement in his billowing surfaces, while allowing staccato glimpses of their source material woven in establishing differentiation with the painted and décollage-centric methods found in the work of the cited precursors and cementing his craft world connection by way of allusions to quilting.

Galen Gibson-Cornell, Thunderbird and Free Party, both 2024, found street-posters from Berlin, New York and Seattle sliced and woven with metallic fabric, thread, zipper and magnets, 28 x 20 x 4 inches and 30 x 19 x 4 inches, respectively. (installation view Tinker Tailor, Bertrand Productions, Philadelphia, PA)

Gibson-Cornell furthers the relationship with mainstays of craftsmanship by not only employing sewing but by innovating with zippers. There was a practical consideration motivating bringing pointed placement that addressed issues of handling, shipping and controlling the unwieldiness of the free-form nature of the works, while careful consideration is given to composition. The zippers also allow three dimensionality, found in Free Party and Thunderbird, both 2024, with their boxiness suggestive of gift packages bulging out from the wall.

The deckled-edged works are presented using a system of mounting posts and magnets, ingeniously developed and fabricated by gallery principal Joseph Leroux, that enables a direct, sans frame, confrontation, reflective of the state from which Gibson-Cornell appropriated his raw materials, while elegantly hovering a couple of inches from the wall that the installation method facilitates.

Galen Gibson-Cornell, Gargantua, 2023, found street-posters from Berlin, Hamburg, New York, Philadelphia, Plovdiv, Sofia and Poznan, sliced and woven, 100 x 144 inches (installation view Tinker Tailor, Bertrand Productions, Philadelphia, PA)

Augmenting Gibson-Cornell’s practice is the use of scale and a deep respect for formal experimentation. Both qualities can be found in the largest work in the exhibition, Gargantua, 2023, coming in at eight feet tall and twelve feet across, it torques and vibrates off the wall like a swollen and, befitting the title, gargantuan amoeba with a jazzy quality that brings to mind the concerns that engaged Frank Stella throughout his career.

A trio of masks (Gibson-Cornell’s preferred parlance: masques) Intimacy, Audacity and Secrecy, all 2024, are redolent of Venetian carnival-wear, while expanding Gibson-Cornell’s oeuvre further and join with the suits as another form of art world fast fashion.

Galen Gibson-Cornell, Intimacy (Masque), 2024, found street-posters from Berlin sliced and woven with metallic fabric and magnets, 15 1/2 x 19 x 3 inches

Of late Gibson-Cornell has become something of a colorist veering away from his signature overall checkerboard to both subtle and dramatic tonalities. which multiplies the appealing zeal of the subject intermeshed. Tom Ford and Couplet, both 2024, come at this proposition from different angles with the former holding a dark svelte pose, a nod to the haute couture promotional source material, in the former, to a golden hue enhanced by the integration of gold fabric, encapsulating the appealing zeal of the bikini-clad model stacked in repeat evoking blown-up frames of film, in the latter.

Galen Gibson-Cornell, Couplet, 2024, found street-posters from New York sliced and woven with metallic fabric, thread, zippers and magnets, 78 x 48 x 8 inches

* Incidentally, there is an exhibition of Kim MacConnels’ work made between 1978–1982 on view through December 21st at Luhring Augustine, NYC.
** Quoted from email that was in response to questions I posed to the artist of November 1, 2024.

Exhibition was on September 13 – October 19, 20