Ap Gorny: If You Only Knew

Text taken from original press release

Glenside, Pa. – “If You Only Knew,” a mid-career retrospective installation by Philadelphia artist A.P. Gorny, will be on view from November 9 through December 19 at the Beaver College Art Gallery. The Gallery is located in the Spruance Art Center on the campus located at Church and Easton Roads. November 9 will also feature a discussion between the artist and Judith Tannenbaum, associate director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, beginning at 6 p.m. in Stiteler Auditorium. A reception in Gorny’s honor will follow in the Gallery. These events are free and open to the public. 

Gorny has a considerable reputation in the Philadelphia community as a printmaker, photographer, installation and performance artist, and teacher. The installation at Beaver College represents an effort by the artist to summarize and survey his career to date. As is typical of Gorny, the work will be dense with complex, sometimes hermetic symbolism, informed by the artist’s voluminous reading and intensely personal, idiosyncratic approach. 

“If You Only Knew” borrows its title from a poem about unacknowledged passion addressed to a mysterious loved one by the French Surrealist poet Robert Desnos. In the front of the Gallery, a chambered wall will be papered with images of bouquets taken by the artist over the course of 20 years. Each bouquet will enclose, within its foliage, a hidden lens through which the viewer peeps inside the wall at upside-down images of various “objects” of the artist’s desire. The acronymic title of this part of the exhibition, H.W.N.C.N.B.M. alludes to the ineffable, inexpressible nature of love. 

The rear of the Gallery will be enclosed with entry possible only through a small portal. This room, entitled “Mise-en-abyme,” will be entirely papered in gold. Inside, at its far end, will stand a rectangular reflecting-pool/altar/sepulchre. Mounted above the water, an old cast iron stove will spout three jets of fire.From the ceiling an overhead cupola will reflect a chain of burnt-in images in the pool below. 

Outside of the gallery, a conical pile of the artist’s old prints and drawings tied in bundles with black ribbons will await their ritual burning on a wooden pyre. The portion of the exhibition, designated as the “Auto-da-fe” and planned to take place during the exhibition’s opening, will be marked by a stone cairn that will remain outside the Gallery during the entire exhibition.

“A.P. Gorny is one of Philadelphia’s most interesting and prolific artists,” notes Gallery Director Paula Marincola. “And since part of our mission is to recognize and foster the efforts of artists in our own community, we are gratified to be able to offer him this opportunity to create an ambitious work especially for the Beaver College Art Gallery.”

Gorny, represented in Philadelphia by Locks Gallery, received his MFA from Yale University. He has taught at Tyler School of Art, Bryn Mawr College and Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, and is currently a full-time faculty member at the University of the Arts. Exhibited nationally, his work is in the collection of the Guggenheim Museum of Art and the National Gallery, Washington, D.C., among others. Marincola will document the exhibit in a forthcoming publication. The exhibition and catalogue have been funded by the Dietrich Foundation; Arcadia Foundation; the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts and the Friends of Beaver College Art Gallery.