Jill Gallenstein
In a realm free of reference and repose, Jill Gallenstein’s hand drawn molecular clusters plunge into the complex
geometries of color, chance and unbound forms. Born in 1975 in Columbus, Ohio, Jill is a multimedia artist working
in drawing, sculpture and photography. She received her MFA from New York University in 2003, and her BFA in
Media Studies from The Columbus College of Art and Design in 1999. She has been awarded the 2007
Dresden/Saxony Residency by the Greater Columbus Arts Council, the Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence
Award for 2007, and is a spring 2008 artist in residence at Headlands Center for the Arts. She has had five solo
shows and has participated in several group exhibitions. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally. She
has been reviewed in the Columbus Alive (April 2004) by Melissa Starker, The Short North Gazette (May 2004) by
Elizabeth Ann James, Washington Square News (April 2003), San Francisco Chronicle (July 2009) and Artweek by
David Buuck (April 2009). She is in numerous private collections including those of Robert Shimshak and Ann Percy,
Curator of Drawings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Artist Statement
We are hardwired to find comfort in symmetry and regular patterns. We look to both as markers of health and vitality,
and as signposts for ideas that have worked in the past. The economy of energy is what determines patterns--they
appear not because of a higher power, but because of a collective need for efficiency. With this body of work, I am
exploring how value judgments placed on persons, objects, or places are incapable of appreciating a pattern in full. It
is only through the accumulation of all points of view—impossible for any one person to achieve—that the universe
can be known. This knowledge itself is maybe the truest knowledge we can have.
These drawings suggest a worldview created from the assemblage of the local. The audience broadly surveys the
work, but must telescope inward to investigate the minute details. A rhythm emerges where the viewer oscillates
between the specific and the general. The temptation is to see one’s own life story in the drawings: rocket ships,
Christmas tree ornaments, a grandmother’s baked goods. The goal, however, is to suggest that point particles exist
as infinite waves of possibility until some measurement locks them into place. With that suspension of finiteness, the
world is perpetually fresh and new; the possibility for both good and evil exists, and there is awareness that each
needs the other to define itself. The drawings serve as models for the equality found in every moment of space and
time.
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