Opening on Wednesday, September 13, 4-7 pm, with performances at 4pm and curator’s exhibition walkthrough at 5pm

Dance Workshop: Thursday, September 14, 2:30pm – 3:30pm

Amelie A. Wallace Gallery at SUNY College, Old Westbury is pleased to present a two-person exhibition of work by Eleanna Anagnos and Alexis Granwell, curated by Tally de Orellana.

Expanding our understanding of painting and sculpture, Eleanna Anagnos and Alexis Granwell team up to present Shift. Breathe. Expand. Painting in Space. Featuring works made of handmade paper, the exhibition sheds light on the potential of this overlooked medium, making it shift, making it breathe, making it expand in space. Anagnos (Mexico City) and Granwell (Philadelphia) first met in 2019 and engaged in a prolific artistic exchange that would soon blossom into friendship. Together, they explored the potential of paper pulp to challenge their own positions as female contemporary artists.

Shift. Breathe. Expand. Painting in Space features works from the last decade and allows the spectator to experience first-hand the pillars of the artists’ unique processes. In this three room installation, the viewer will have the opportunity to walk through Anagnos and Granwell’s ongoing collaboration and experimentation with new techniques shifting from common painterly practices; their assertion and defiance towards the ‘feminine’; and their constant research on paper as a malleable, sustainable medium which enables us to expand our approach to painting.

This texturally rich exhibition includes sculptures incorporating steel and wood elements that reference the somatic and the corporeal; painterly wall works embedded with rocks and other geological elements; drawings; and a process library. 

A public reception for Shift. Breathe. Expand. Painting in Space is scheduled for Wednesday, September 13 between 4pm and 7pm, with improvisational dance and music performances at 4pm, followed by Curator’s Guided Tour of the show at 5pm. A Dance Workshop with the artists and performers is scheduled for Thursday, September 14th, 2:30pm - 3:30pm. Contact Gallery Director to reserve a seat at yih@oldwestbury.edu.

The public programs received a generous grant from PAC (Panther Arts Collective) Performing Arts Funding.

For more information, please contact: nataliadeorellana@gmail.com (Curator) and yih@oldwestbury.edu (Gallery Director)

Eleanna Anagnos (b.1980, Evanston, IL) is a Greek-American artist and curator. She investigates intersections and thresholds between painting, drawing, and sculpture and shifts perceptual values through the manipulation of material hierarchies and processes. Eleanna earned her MFA in Painting from the Tyler School of Art and a BA with honors and distinction from Kenyon College with a concentration in Women’s and Gender Studies. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, most recently at Material Art Fair in Mexico City with a solo presentation with HIGH NOON Gallery (2023). Her work has been featured in The New York Times, BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, Maake Magazine, and Artnet. Eleanna has been honored with fellowships from the Grant Wood Colony, The Rauschenberg Foundation Residency, BAU Institute at the Camargo Foundation, Yaddo, the Anderson Ranch, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts.

Alexis Granwell (b. 1981, New York) is an artist who investigates the potential of paper pulp to record touch and create intimacy, exploring the psychological and bodily characteristics of our built and natural environments. She earned her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and her BFA (magna cum laude) in painting with a minor in art history from Boston University. Alexis is a recipient of The Denbo Fellowship and The Independence Foundation Fine Arts Fellowship. She has been awarded residencies at the I-Park Foundation, Ragdale, and Jentel. She has participated in exhibitions at The American University Art Museum at the Katzen Art Center, BravinLee Programs, Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, and Europos Parkas Museum in Vilnius, Lithuania. Alexis has a forthcoming exhibition at The Weatherspoon Museum. Her work has been reviewed in Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, Two Coats of Paint, Maake Magazine, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Tally de Orellana is an interdisciplinary curator based in London, UK and Philadelphia, PA. Born in Spain and raised in Italy, France, and the United Kingdom, she has curated exhibitions in Europe and the US since 2008. She held the 2016-2017 Hilla Rebay International Fellowship at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, working in their exhibitions programming in New York, Bilbao, and Venice and, more recently, the Daniel W. Dietrich II curatorial fellowship in Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Tally graduated from the dual degree program: Arts Administration and Policy, and Modern Art History, Theory and Criticism (2016) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and her research targets the role of cultural institutions and curatorial practices in the systems of classification and cultural hierarchies.

Photographs by Ryan Collerd Studio.