GAVLAK Palm Beach is proud to announce ZENITH, the United States release of a sculptural collaboration between the renown French porcelain company BERNARDAUD and artist Gisela Colón. Known for her monumental futuristic sculptures, Colón has devoted herself to working with porcelain for the first time, creating four lustrous organic forms inspired by cosmic forces. The four-part art installation, with its iridescent prismatic surface, is issued in a limited edition of 75.
Invited to work at the BERNARDAUD founding site in Limoges, France, Gisela Colón saw porcelain as an opportunity to expand her creative process. Inspired by the immutable aspect of porcelain, the artist worked for two years with BERNARDAUD’s research and development team inside a proprietary laboratory chamber which she spiritedly refers to as “La Chambre des Mystères.” In this “Mystery Room,” she developed in collaboration with BERNARDAUD scientists, the groundbreaking metallic rendering technique which coats the porcelain.
‘‘There is such a long and rich history associated with porcelain. For me as an artist, it presented a challenge because my work relates to envisioning the future. It became a fascinating endeavor to take a traditional, historic, centuries old material and mold it into something novel and futuristic. Collaborating with BERNARDAUD was an exciting process of navigating into undiscovered territory, where past, present, and future merged cosmically into the ZENITH objets d’art.’’ -- Gisela Colón
Informed by astronomy, the curvatures of the ZENITH works represent the energetic pull observed when cosmological objects are located at the closest point in space to each other. Colón describes the four capsules as celestial bodies containing fragments of the earth, the sky, the stars, and the cosmos. Possessed with hypnotic colors, the ZENITH organic forms reflect the life that surrounds them, acting as mirrors of universal time. To coincide with the unveiling of ZENITH, the gallery will present new sculptures from Colón’s Pods and Monoliths bodies of work. Colón’s Pods series of wall works embody life-force communicating transformative universal energy. Towering at 8 feet tall, the Monoliths comprise part of her Unidentified Object series, invoking connections to mystical worlds beyond Earth.
GISELA COLÓN (b. 1966, Vancouver, Canada, raised 1967, San Juan, Puerto Rico), is an American contemporary artist who has developed a unique sculptural language ofOrganic Minimalism breathing life-like qualities into reductive forms. Through a vocabulary of anthropomorphic geometries, Colón challenges, deconstructs and expands on a predominantly male-dominated Minimalist canon. Her pristine light activated sculptures are created utilizing innovative 21st century materials such as optical acrylics and high-technology aerospace carbon fiber.
Colón has exhibited internationally throughout the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Standout exhibitions include the Land Art Biennial, Desert X AlUla (Saudi Arabia, 2020), Quantum Shift, Frieze Sculpture (London, 2021), and Forever is Now (Egypt, 2021) presenting a site-specific monument at the Pyramids of Giza, a UNESCO landmark dating back 4,500 years. Colón’s work is currently featured in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA’s) historic survey exhibition Light, Space, Surface: Art from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art at the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (2021-2022), traveling to the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (2022). In 2022, continuing her expansion into the realm of Land Art, as part of the curated exhibition Godheads - Idols in Times of Crises, Colón will embed a monumental work into Lustwarande, a baroque forest in Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Gisela Colón’s work resides in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), San Diego, CA; Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami, FL; Mint Museum, North Carolina, Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA; Grand Rapids Museum of Art (GRAM), Grand Rapids, MI; and Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO, amongst others. Colón attended University of Puerto Rico (BA Economics, magna cum aude, 1987) and Southwestern University School of Law (JD 1990). Originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, the artist lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
BERNARDAUD masters the art of French porcelain since 1863 in Limoges. Still family-owned, it has always chosen excellence, quality and precision. Working in a field that is perpetually evolving, Bernardaud remains in the elite of design and innovation, developing technologies in its Limoges manufacture that push back the limits of the art of porcelain-making. Each creation bearing the Bernardaud mark, whether dinnerware service, jewelry, furniture, light fixtures or limited art editions, brings luxury to everyday life and proves that two thousand years after it was first discovered, porcelain remains as remarkable as ever.
ZENITH will be on view through March 31, 2022, at GAVLAK Palm Beach, 340 Royal Poinciana Way, M334, Palm Beach, Florida. For more information concerning the exhibition or for press inquiries, please contact John McGurk at 561-833-0583.
