The Art of Andy Gambrell

Andy Gambrell, Winter Dawn III, 

acrylic paint on canvas over wood panel,

48” x 48”, 2025

Visiting artist Andy Gambrell’s abstract painting is created by utilizing laser eye-tracking to digitally record the delineated path of his eye while viewing nature, which translates into painted lines within his work. In collaboration with dance choreographer, Professor Susan Gingrasso, the paintings are accompanied by modern dance. When I viewed the performance, delivered by students from the University of Wisconsin and Lawrence University, I got the feeling that we were seeing gallery viewers view art as interpreted through dance. The dancers seemed to mimic the energy of the line work within the paintings, thereby physically and spatially representing the two-dimensional representation of Gambrell’s own eye. I found the pairing of Gambrell’s pastel and neon color palette to have an interesting synergy with the dancer’s “plainclothes” attire—sneakers, sweatpants, t-shirts and capri-pants—framing the presentation in a contrasting yet complimentary combination of abstract and naturalistic forms. Throughout the performance, the dancers perform gestures of giving, taking and sharing in front of Gambrell’s abstract landscapes, and to me it felt like they were pulling their sensory discoveries of nature from the works and sharing the experience with their fellow gallery visitors. Gambrell’s discussion with our Installation Art class on April 15th was meaningful to me because I was able to examine an actual working artist’s thoughts on maintaining a complex art career and persona, something which is often an enigma to me. He also helped identify, for me, an interest in exploring the aspect of creating and process as art versus the final product itself, which is very different from my past creative focus. 

Do the works echo Yvonne Rainer’s minimalism 

or Robert Wilson’s ‘theater of images’?

While I wouldn’t necessarily say Rainer’s minimalism through choreography is exactly the same to Gambrell/Gingrasso’s, I think the similarity can be seen in the way the dancers/actors in each act as viewers/witnesses of the work, experiencing it through choreography. To me, in Wilson’s “Theater of Images,” the scope is much greater, and the actors/dancers seem much more integrated into the pieces. With Gambrell/Gingrasso’s work, the dancers seem out the painting, present in celebration of the nature the paintings represent, or of the work itself. I do see a correlation between Gingrasso and the choreography of Bruce Nauman.