Sally Gil was born and raised in Bennington, Vermont, she received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California San Diego and her Master of Fine Arts from Hunter College, CUNY.
Gil is based in Brooklyn, New York, and has shown at The Bennington Museum, Vermont; White Columns, New York; The Helen Day Art Center, Stowe, VT; Geary Contemporary, New York; 571 Projects, New York and Vermont; The University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC; and the Dean Bergen Gallery, Brooklyn, NY. She has also been featured in group shows at The Fleming Museum, in Burlington, VT; The Bennington Museum, Vermont; The Brooklyn Museum; The Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn; and White Columns, NYC, among other venues.
In 2013, Sally was selected as a Fellow at ApexArt and traveled to São Paolo, Brazil for one month. She was chosen as a visiting artist at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte in 2010 and at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 2001. Her work was part of the US State Department’s Arts in Embassies program and was displayed in the American Embassy in Brazzaville, Congo from 2014 to 2016.
In 2018, she was awarded a New York City MTA public art commission for the Avenue U station on the N line, Brooklyn. For this commission, she created and oversaw the fabrication of fourteen 4 x 9 feet mosaic niches installed at Avenue U on the N line in Brooklyn, New York. 2020, an image from her subway installation was chosen for the “Poetry in Motion” project featured throughout the New York City subway system.
CV
EDUCATION
MFA, Hunter College of the City University of New York
BA, University of California, San Diego
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2023 OPEN AND SHUT, Vorderzimmer Art Salon, Brooklyn, NY
2016 MOVING FAST, CONNECTING THROUGH TIME, Helen Day AC, Stowe, VT
2016 OUT OF THIS WORLD, The Bennington Museum, Bennington Vermont
2015 THERE IS MORE Project room Installation, Geary Contemporary, NY, NY
2010 SALLY GIL WORKS ON PAPER Solo show at 571 Projects New York, NY
2010 UP CLOSE AND FAR AWAY Solo Show at UNC. Charlotte, N. Carolina
2008 SALLY GIL Solo at The Dean Bergen Gallery Brooklyn, New York
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2020 EL QUE BUSCA, ENCUENTRA...Y SIGUE ECONTRANDO, On-Line Exhibition: White Columns, NY, NY
2020 SCHWITTER’S ARMY, Merz Gallery, Sanquhar, Scotland, UK
2019 WORKS ON PAPER, A DECADE OF COLLECTING, Bennington Museum, Bennington, VT
2019 STORYLINES, 2 person show at 571 Projects, Stowe, VT
2018 FLOWER POWER, Garvey Simon Gallery, NY, NY
2018 (UN)COMMON Weill Art Gallery at The 92nd Street Y, NY, NY
2017 REIMAGINING MOSES The Bennington Museum, Bennington, VT
2016-17 CONTEMPORARY VOICES FROM VT The Fleming Museum of Art, Burlington, VT
2016 WORD Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY
2015 ANOTHER WAY IN, 2 Person show, Geary Contemporary, NY, NY
2013 SKY FEST, Barrett Art Center, Poughkeepsie, NY
2012 SMALL WORK SHOW, 440 Gallery, Brooklyn NY
2011 Group Show, Muriel Guepin Gallery Brooklyn, NY
2009 SMALL WORKS SHOW, Juried by Charles Long 440 Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2007 THE HARLEM ART PROJECT vers. 2 at Saatchi & Saatchi, NY, NY
2002 20/02 The Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
1999 – 2000 MEALY MOUTHED MATERIALS, CHARISMATIC SHAPES, AND OTHER FUNNY STORIES Conceived and Organized by Sally Gil w/Dan Mills. Traveling Exhibition:
The Biggen Gallery of Art, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama
The Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture, University of Tennesse, Knoxville
Rowe Arts Gallery, UNC at Charlotte, North Carolina
University Galleries, ISU, Normal, Illinois
Roland Gibson Gallery, SUNY at Potsdam, New York
1999 OUTER BOROUGHS, Curated by Paul Ha and Lauren Ross White Columns, New York, New York.
SALLY GIL AND PABLO REY, 76 Varick Street Gallery, NYC
1998 NEW DIRECTIONS '98, Curated by Eugenie Tsai Barrett Art Center Poughkeepsie, NY
SEEING MONEY ("Five and Ten") The Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
1997 ART ON PAPER, Weatherspoon Gallery UNC., Greensboro
CURRENT UNDERCURRENT: WORKING IN BROOKLYN, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
SUTURE, The Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
NOTABLE HONORS
2020 New York MTA “Poetry in Motion” Subway poster Artwork with poem by Heather McHugh
2018 New York MTA Subway Commission, installed at Avenue U, N train line Brooklyn, 10/2018
2013 Apex Art Fellow to San Paulo, Brazil
2014-2017 US State Department Arts in Embassy Program, Brazzaville Embassy, Congo
2010 UNC Charlotte Charlotte, N. Carolina, Visiting artist and lecturer
2000 University of Tennessee at Knoxville1999 SUNY at Potsdam, NY Visiting Artist and lecturer
2000 UNC Charlotte Charlotte, N. Carolina Visiting Artist and Panelist
1997 Vermont Studio Center Scholarship
Work in the collections of Agnes Gund, The Bennington Museum, Capital Z partners, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, among others
SELECTED PRESS
Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya, ‘Edges of a South Brooklyn Sky - Interview with Sally Gil’, The Norwich Radical, January 25, 2020
‘Bennington-born artist's murals installed in NY subway station’, Bennington Banner, December 15, 2018
Christie Wisniewski, ‘Bennington-born artist brightens NYC subway’, Battleboro Reformer, December 9, 2018
Joseph Ditta, ‘Sally Gil’s Gravesend’, Gravesend Gazette, November 19, 2018
‘Out of This World at Bennington Museum’, Kolaj Magazine, 2016
Sadie Williams, ‘Sally Gil Travels Through Time and Space With Collage’, Seven Days, September 19, 2016
Elizabeth Weiss, ‘#72 Review Of Sally Gil's Installation At Jack Geary Contemporary’, Keep Talking, February 12, 2015
Daniel Albanese, ‘Sally’s Blue Wall on Bergen’, The Dusty Rebel, 2012
‘Sally’s Beautiful Blue Wall’, Wooster Collective, April 9, 2009
Artist Statement
My individual 2D works while not strictly autobiographical are imbued with my personal history and discoveries and thoughts about living in the world. I draw upon the specifics and history of imagery, location, and what responses I have at the time. I am after what I do not know, and what is beyond and behind our apparent world. They are at once a celebration of beauty, immenseness, and mysterious organization seen in the person-made and natural world; as well as a mourning for the loss that is inherent in everything. Most recently the work responded particularly to the specific locations and architecture where it is intended to be seen in site-specific gallery exhibitions, and more permanently in public art. They are made through a process of decisions based on composition, intuition, and happenstance. Print media images and painted paper and elements are arranged and piled up, abutting each other and suggestive of narrative. The layers of paper and paint worked on over time, express a concurrent story of the life the painting itself has lived. Paper materials are built in layers from fragments torn and cut and applied as collage or papier-mache'. Painting and drawing, are used to create context and justification: and as editing, linking, and elaborating tools. I am interested in history specifically seen in sequences of how and why things came to be, and in the relationships and narrative connections between parts. Painting and mark-making happen in real-time, connecting disparate elements and linking imagery to the present.
-Sally Gil