Untitled (Wrapped grid)
Artist
Ellen Phelan
(American, born 1943)
Date1972
MediumAcrylic on cut canvas and wire
Dimensions60 × 36 × 1 1/2 in. (152.4 × 91.4 × 3.8 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineGift of Susanne F. Hilberry Estate, 2021
Object numberUAC6846
DescriptionEllen Phelan (b. 1943) is an acclaimed multimedia artist who was foundational to the Detroit art scene of the 1960s and 70s. An alumna of Wayne State University, she graduated with her BFA in 1969 and her MFA in 1971, emerging from a context steeped in the post-Minimalism of Cass Corridor. She once described in an interview: “At the time there was this scene in Detroit, a rough, gritty Motor City junk aesthetic. It was also quite macho, lots of guys. I took canvas off the stretcher and began treating it as an object—painting both sides, cutting and folding...But they were much more feminine, much softer, and had color.” Untitled (Wrapped grid) is one result of such action, comprised of an asymmetrical gridded superstructure covered with cut canvas variously painted with teal pigment. Strips painted and tightly wound yield a striped pattern over the gridlines while numerous twisting and snarled strands hang loose from the intersections, producing a remarkable tension between order and disorder, formal structure and chance. In this way, Untitled (Wrapped grid) feels remarkably organic, embodying nature’s ambivalence; personally, this piece brings to mind a wetland habitat, or an architectural site reclaimed by climbing flora. More abstractly, perhaps the piece can be seen as a metaphor for gender or even language since: Untitled (Wrapped grid) is a structure on which ‘opposites’ (in color) contrast as well as blend; some areas of the grid are dense while others are sparse; and different areas of the grid offer different-colored ‘meanings’ in teal or creamy canvas. Through works such as this, Phelan probes the broader relationship between object and image—not only to explore modernist concerns such as media and dimensionality, it seems, but to wrestle with nascent principles of postmodern representation and significance.
Since the early 1970s—shortly after graduating with her MFA and producing Untitled (Wrapped grid)—Phelan has lived and worked in New York. This era also marks a decisive turn in Phelan’s practice away from “process art” and toward painting. Her landscapes painted en plein air and ethereal portrayals of doll figures have characterized her oeuvre since and launched her success internationally. Phelan’s work is now included in collections at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others, and she has been represented by some of the most prestigious galleries across the States.
Written by Sarah Teppen
1 https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2004/07/01/ellen-phelan/
2 https://brooklynrail.org/2009/02/art/ellen-phelan-with-phong-bui/?search
3 https://artmuseum.wayne.edu/exhibitions/23/ellen-phelan-survey-of-works-from-the- wsu-collection/objects
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