Chevron
Galen Gibson-Cornell
2025
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Galen Gibson-Cornell was born and raised in Maryville, Missouri, in a family of classical musicians. During his undergraduate education, he completed astudy abroad semester in Angers, France, which began a lifetime fascination with international immersion. As a result, his artistic practice reflects this captivation with cities around the world, which he explores through creative projects. Notably, he has worked in Berlin, Budapest, Plovdiv, Buenos Aires, Venice, and Novi Sad, allowing him to engage with diverse cultures and urban landscapes that significantly influence his work.
In 2013 Gibson-Cornell finished his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Wisconsin, and for the academic year 2013-14 he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Budapest, Hungary, where he was a scholar at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. His work there was formative for his exploration into street-posters and other urban ephemera, as he focused on creating artworks using political campaign posters as subject matter.
Since 2017 Gibson-Cornell has lived and worked in Philadelphia. From 2017 to 2021 he taught printmaking at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, and since 2021 he has worked full-time in his studio. Galen’s work is currently represented by Bertrand Productions Gallery in Philadelphia, and TW Fine Art in West Palm Beach (FL), and New York City.
His work has exhibited across the United States and internationally, most notably featured in the Museum of Wisconsin Art, Poster House Museum (NYC), and the U.S. Embassy to the Republic of Togo. His work is in several notable collections, including 21C Museum Hotels, Microsoft, and the University of Texas Medical Center.
This artist has contributed a video to our Video Resources page.
ARTIST STATEMENT
This artwork is composed of sliced and woven street posters collected by the artist from the walls of New York City, Berlin, and Venice.
My artistic practice is an exploration of urban culture, human connection, and the transformation of everyday materials into powerful, unified statements. By collecting street posters from cities around the world, I tap into the pulse of each place—capturing the attitudes, priorities, and social dynamics reflected in these ephemeral pieces of urban fabric. Through my process of “dissection,” where I slice these materials into strips, I remove their original function as advertisements and recontextualize them into something with a much more meaningful aesthetic potential.
The act of weaving these fragmented strips is both a literal and metaphorical act of unification. Weaving, as a practice, symbolizes interconnectedness and the strength that can arise from combining individual, fragile elements into a cohesive whole. My studio work echoes this idea of cultural and social unity because I create vibrant, layered artworks that stitch together fragments of various places, histories, and emotions.
My background in printmaking gives me a unique relationship to the printed urban materials I collect, which represent a common phenomenon of rapid-paced, short-lived ads clamoring for attention. Through my interest in fiber arts and weaving, I’ve found a way to thoroughly examine these materials. My process allows me to preserve this “trash” within an art context, relieved of its function, and open for contemplation and discussion.
My finished artworks often have a disorienting visual complexity, with fragments of images and messages from different posters reassembled into a kaleidoscopic puzzle. For me, this effect represents the essence of memory itself. The works are uniquely personal — they are meditations on my own travels, memories, and reflections — but they also speak to a shared global visual language that references a potential unified way forward amid global tendencies for fragmentation, isolation, and turmoil.
Therefore, my practice is a commentary on the intersections of culture, memory, and materiality, as well as a tribute to the unseen or overlooked elements of urban life. By transforming materials discarded by society into art, I’m not only preserving fragments of the cities I explore but also reimagining them as powerful symbols of unity and connection, emphasized by my weaving process.
MATERIALS AND TECHNIQUES
Found street posters from New York City, Berlin, and Venice.
Hand weaving, hand stitching.