Gisela Colon

Gisela Colon is an American international contemporary artist who has developed a unique vocabulary of Organic Minimalism, breathing lifelike qualities into reductive forms. Operating at the intersection of art and science, Colon is best known for meticulously creating light-activated sculptures through industrial and technological processes. Drawing from aerospace and other scientific realms, Colon utilizes innovative sculptural materials such as carbon fiber and optical materials of the 21st century, to generate her energetic sculptures. Colon's gender-fluid sculptures disrupt the traditional view of the masculine minimal object, by embodying qualities of energy, movement and growth, through a merger of industrial with the organic.

Colon has exhibited internationally throughout the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Originally from San Juan Puerto Rico, but currently living and working in Los Angeles, California, Colon creates work that is the product of cross-cultural influences, fusing characteristics of Minimalism, Light and Space, Finish Fetish, Op Art, and Kinetic Art.

Colon 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. Her use of color, shapes and internal layering is considered "assertively feminist," and "grounded in Minimalism." Her work has been compared to earlier male artists like Craig Kaufman, Dewain Valentine, Doug Wheeler, and Peter Alexander for her use of materials and light as medium; however, as pointed out in Artforum, "Colon's labors are very much her own...Her employ of industrial materials and techniques thus structurally redoubles an earlier industry-driven technophilia, even as she eschews her predecessor's penchant for outsourcing production."

Colon's oeuvre encompasses several distinct sculptural forms: Pods, Monoliths, Slabs, Light Portals, and Unidentified Objects. The through-line in all of Colon's work is the concept of the "mutable object." Influenced by Donald Judd's ideas and writings, such as his seminal essay "Specific Objects" (1964, published 1965), Colon refers to her works as "non-specific objects" to highlight their deliberate fluid indeterminacy. The sculptures are conceived as "non-specific objects" that transmute their physical qualities through fluctuating movement, varied lighting, changing environmental conditions, and the passage of time.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023