Opening Reception of 'Figured Frames,' a Solo Exhibition featuring Gail Peter Borden

Figured Frames

Gail Peter Borden
May 10th - June 14th, 2025

Artist talk : Saturday, May 10th, 4:00 - 4:45pm
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 10th, 5:00 - 7:00pm

Galleri Urbane is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of the latest work by Houston artist and architect Gail Peter Borden entitled Figured Frames. Join us for a conversation with the artist and slide presentation from 4:00 - 4:45p.m on May 10th, with the refreshments and the opening reception following the talk at 5:00p.m.

The forms that Borden creates - epitomes of an exquisitely precise synergy between material, color, and proportion - invite viewers to perceive two- and three-dimensional structures anew. Playful and rigorous, they harness aspects of architecture but ultimately transcend its circumscribed sets of questions and answers.

In this recent series, Borden reveals a novel approach. “Previously, I stayed in orthogonal forms - squares, rectangles - and focused on the idea of surface and composition within that. [For Figured Frames], I have started to fabricate custom-geometry frames,” the artist says. “So they’re still precisely geometric, but they now become extensions of the interior geometries,” which he previously explored only within the confines of each frame, each exterior surface remaining a window or portal. Now, dimensionality emerges, derived from an extension of the composition. “They now become objects.”

Within the artist’s oeuvre, fields of color strategically - and structurally - imply depth. “Color is the composition,” Borden says. “In almost none of [the works] is there really ever line, it’s always tone. And so edge or geometry is always made through a juxtaposition of color.” The layering of shades creates optical impressions, forming veils or transparencies, while the play of dominant and recessive colors provokes oscillatory effects and the slick, reflective resin establishes a plane of engagement.

But in its scope, the Figured Frames series introduces new terrain. “Each [piece] has an open window to a sort of interiority,” Borden says. “So there’s an implied space and [both] a revelation and concealment of what you see and what you project in terms of depth.” On one wall, a field of pieces unites into a constellation of modular elements but also establishes dynamic juxtapositions between objects of various color families, scales, and sensibilities. They play with different modes of seeing: forming protruding or receding perspectival planes.

To see these open structures is to contemplate spatial perception itself - a cerebro-visceral experience, unveiled. It can become an act of discovery at any point. “Only through time, movement, perception, and context can the piece be understood as a quiet participant in its understanding. The object provides a dialogue by revealing that which is already there.”