May 06 - June 11, 2011

twilight

FOR IMMEDIATELY RELEASE

April 21, 2011

ALLYSON STRAFELLA: TWILIGHT AT GALLERY JOE

Philadelphia, PA – Gallery Joe is pleased to present the first solo exhibition in Philadelphia of drawings by Allyson Strafella. Twilight opens in the Vault Gallery on Friday, May 6 and continues through June 13, 2011. Twilight runs concurrently with an exhibition of drawings by Sabine Friesicke in the Front Gallery.

Allyson Strafella has been working with a typewriter, making drawings for over 17 years. The results of this work are drawings of extreme delicacy, most not more than 5 x 7 inches. Often typed directly on carbon paper, Strafella seems to push the paper to the absolute limit of its ability to capture the stroke of the typewriter. These fragile images sometimes seem to hang at the very edge of existence.

“I began drawing out of the need to communicate, to find my own language. I was looking for a way to record my thoughts and ideas. So I began writing with a typewriter, a tool that could keep up with my thoughts. However, I employed no rules of the written language: no capitalization, no punctuation, no paragraphs. The writing slowly transformed, initially into a language of patterns and grids formed by typing punctuation marks; the words left the page and what remained has become my language: drawing.” — Allyson Strafella

Recent exhibitions include her first solo show at Von Lintel Gallery, New York, and Drawn/Taped/Burned: Abstraction on Paper, from the Sally & Wynn Kramarsky Collection. Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY

Strafella is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. She has attended residency programs at the Dieu Donne Papermill, New York, NY, Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY and MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH. Her drawings are included in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA among others. Allyson Strafella lives and works in Hudson, NY.

Twilight opens on Friday, May 6 and runs through Saturday, June 13, 2011. The artist will be present at an opening reception on First Friday, May 6 from 6-8 PM. Regular gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday 12 - 5:30, other days by appointment. For additional information, visit our website at www.galleryjoe.com or contact Becky Kerlin, 215.592.7752