Gerry Trilling Featured in Transformers: Re-contextualizing Our Material Culture

Gerry Trilling’s art is featured in Transformers: Re-contextualizing Our Material Culture at the Ruth Funk Center for Textile Arts, Florida Institute for Technology in Melbourne, FL. The show opened in September and will continue until December 17.

The show presents Trilling’s and several other artists’ work as reflections of the raw materials they find in everyday culture to build their pieces. Transformers showcases how normal aspects of the most common materials can gain significant meaning through the artists’ reconstructions.

“Gerry Trilling’s constructed paintings, composed mostly of lengths of fabric, contemplate the slow process of cultural and ethnic assimilation.” says Transformer’s curator and artist China Marks. In Transformers, Gerry pieces together paintings from lengths of fabric and other materials. Initially, they appear as just that: paintings of rearranged fabric, but when you take a closer look, they gain a different interpretation. Her beautifully simple yet complex paintings challenge you to look further and examine the cultural implications surrounding the work. “Notice Trilling’s juxtapositions of textures and patterns as well as changes in scale within a single painting, what happens when one painting is hung above another or when a pattern in one painting shows up as part of another painting, re-contextualized and refreshed. Then ask yourself what these things signify.” says Marks.