Glowing Images: Grant Gill

Grant Gill (American, b. 1990), Sam on Our Tenth Sun, 2023. Archival pigment print. 24 x 16 inches (Edition of 5); 30 x 20 inches (Edition of 3).

 

It is our greatest pleasure to announce the second solo exhibition of work by Grant Gill, Glowing Images, which opens to the public on Friday, June 30th with a reception from 5-8pm at The Alice Wilds.

in the artist’s words…
My practice depends on photographs to be more than just one thing—a truth or a lie, a memory or fantasy, both possible and impossible. I am interested in wrapping up the language of photography in a way that produces a moment of magic; to visualize the struggle of desperately wanting the impossible to be real. Glowing Images is a collection of photographic work that unknowingly began in 2013 and consists of this practice of manipulating light as magic.
 
As my longest relationship, this body of work is a display of evolving sight, fueled by love and desire, warmth and color. Photographs see romantic thoughts settle among representations of light. This is situated by light as a participant through the personification of its haptic qualities, while also exploring how light can affect the surface of things through both play and pause. It is my attempt to physically touch and assemble what is ultimately bodiless in form.
 
Images center around my attraction to the Sun and its complexity. As a terrifying cosmic object, both capable of awe and destruction, I am drawn to trace its presence like I would touch the body of a lover. I want to forever remember the way its warmth felt on my hand, how its blinding presence marked me as I deeply stared into its white hotness, or even how its colors would illuminate across a space, a landscape, or a fold in a bedsheet. Over time, the intensity of the Sun’s pervasiveness became paralleled to my love for my partner. I have learned to love deeper through the hummed glows and pierced spotlights the Sun has presented. Glowing Images is equally the illumination of my partner’s ear backlit by a setting sun, as it is the painted heavens transformed by an aurora. It is both the gentle note of a discarded joke thumb, and dewed skin glistening in summer heat. It is found in intense desire and tender impressions.

* * * * *

Grant Gill (b. 1990) is a Milwaukee-based artist, image maker, and educator. As an image maker, he is enticed by the possibility of limitless structures—objects that change state, become flexible, disappear and then return. These properties formally align with a general understanding of magic, both in secular and spiritual forms, and further can be found in queerness. Gill’s work derives from this affinity to magic as a queered perspective, and he displays this through play of photographic production. Photography, in its construction, defines the possibility of a limitless structure, as it is manipulated light fractured in both time and space.
 
Gill received an MFA in Studio Art from the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati and a BFA in Photography from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally at institutions including The Alice Wilds, Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, Filter Space, The Neon Heater, Osnova Gallery, SÍM Gallery, and has worked with the Brussels Royal Opera House. He continues to show work within Milwaukee exhibiting at Usable Space, Var, MIAD Gallery at the Ave, and previously Chamber and After School Special.
 
He was a previous recipient of the Mary L. Nohl Suitcase Export Fund and has been a recognized finalist for the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowship, NöStudios fellowship, and the gener8tor Art. Gill has contributed to various arts related programming in Milwaukee including organizing a Hunger Task Force print benefit at The Portrait Society Gallery, facilitating a panel discussion with FXG Church, and co-organized the Pitch Project Artist Book Fair. 
 

EVENTS:
opening reception on friday, june 30 from 5-8pm
gallery night reception on friday, july 21 from 5-8pm
gallery tour with the artist on saturday, july 22 at 1pm