In this recent body of work, Penn continues to expand the language of drawing in sculptural space. Her show at FURNACE includes a wall-based installation and large-scale tondos from her Havisham series. Penn’s ambitious site-responsive installations and mixed-media constructions have been exhibited widely. Using synthetic materials like polyester mesh, Mylar, plastic garbage bags, and colored staples, she examines substance, immateriality and perceptual incident. Her interest in film and fiction informs the work. Most recently, Penn was included in The Stubborn Influence of Painting at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. 

As art critic Barry Schwabsky notes in his catalogue essay “Nuances Matter” for Penn’s 2017 solo exhibition at SUNY Old Westbury, “It’s really the substances of which the works are made, the sheer physical stuff, which all these nuances are there to make evident, that give the works their affect...the nuances that show the matter and the matter that shows the nuances.“

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Gelah Penn’s recent solo exhibitions include: Undercurrent (Brooklyn, NY), Baker Center for the
Arts/Muhlenberg College, Amelie A. Wallace Gallery/SUNY Old Westbury, and ICEHOUSE
Project Space. Group exhibitions include: Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Center for
Maine Contemporary Art, and Felician University. Her work is in the collections of the
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Arkansas Arts Center, Columbus Museum, Brooklyn Museum
Library and Gund Library/Cleveland Institute of Art. Reviews of her work have been published
in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, d’Art International, Whitehot
Magazine and art critical; her work was featured in Sculpture Magazine. 

Penn has received a Tree of Life Individual Artist Grant and fellowships from the
Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, Yaddo and MacDowell.
After years in NYC, the artist now lives in rural Connecticut.