Gern en regalia is pleased to present a group exhibition entitled these lines grow like trees around your crown of sky with works by Felipe Pagan, Jenna Beasley, Will Alexander, Ingrid Yi-Chen Lu, Sid Maurer, and Orange Li.
The title is found within a poem by the SF Renaissance surrealist poet Philip Lamantia, who had influence on Will Alexander, one of the artists in the exhibition.
What potent cosmological title would encapsulate all the deep and brilliant soul explorations within the works in the group exhibition? We were meditating on the phrases ”hearts of space” “steam within rubies”, “molten underground intarsias” & “threads of hope in the inferno,” the artist Orange Li’s line~
Felipe Pagan is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in NYC. Pagan was born and raised in Puerto Rico, and received his BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in New Studio Practice. He has held solo exhibitions at Cholita (Brooklyn), and Chaos Computer (Brooklyn). Pagan’s work examines his capacity to channel truth and meaning from anonymous creatures and archetypes that present themselves through a media poisoned psyche.
Ingrid Yi-Chen Lu (b. 2000, Taipei, Taiwan) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her painting practice explores material processes, diary writing, and collecting habits. Drawing inspiration from childhood, mass-produced goods, and city life, she embraces DIY approaches that combine oil and acrylic with textiles, clay, and found objects. Her work has been included in exhibitions at White Columns (New York, NY), Adams and Ollman (Portland, OR), Morgan Lehman (New York, NY), National Arts Club (New York, NY), Romance (Pittsburgh, PA), Iowa (Brooklyn, NY), and Melrose Botanical Garden (Los Angeles, CA). Lu holds an MFA in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute and a BFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design.
Sid Maurer is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY.
Jenna Beasley (b. 1987, Terre Haute, Indiana) is an artist living and working in New York. She completed her MFA at Hunter College in 2021 and holds a BFA in Painting from Indiana University. Her work has been included in exhibitions at Smilers, New York, NY; Semiose Gallery, Paris, FR; Blackstone Vainberg, New York, NY; No Place Gallery, Columbus, OH; Mrs., New York, NY; Rachel Uffner, New York, NY; and NO Foundation, Toronto, CA, among others.
Orange Li is a Taiwanese-American artist whose practice draws from memory, dreams, and the intuitive connection between the body and the psychological state of the individual. Li explores fluid dualities—like sliding dials—between natural elements, cultures, dreams and reality, and life and death. Her work searches for the threads that connect the human and natural worlds, in an effort to create a Gesamtkunstwerk (universal artwork) that synthesizes different forms of knowledge into her own aesthetic logic.
Li’s work has been presented in select exhibitions including Bienvenu Steinberg & C, New York (2025); The Drawing Center Benefit Show, New York (2024); LatchKey Gallery, New York (2024); Elza Kayal Gallery, New York (2023); Village One Arts Gallery, New York (2021, 2023); Mana Contemporary, Jersey City (2021); and Monira Foundation, Jersey City (2021). She currently lives and works between New York and Jersey City, and received her MFA in Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 2024.
Will Alexander is a poet, novelist, playwright, philosopher, visual artist, and musician. He has published over forty books in a variety of genres and has earned many honors and awards including a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry, a California Arts Council Fellowship, the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award, a Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award, and the 2016 Jackson Poetry Prize. He has also exhibited his artwork in group and solo shows. His publications include Charismatic Spirals (ISOLARII, 2024), The Coming Mental Range (Litmus Press, 2023), Refractive Africa (New Directions, 2021/Granta, 2022), which was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, Divine Blue Light (City Lights, 2022), The Combustion Cycle (Roof Books, 2021), Across the Vapor Gulf (New Directions, 2017), and The Sri Lankan Loxodrome (New Directions, 2009). He is currently the poet-in-residence at Beyond Baroque in Venice, California and has lived his entire life in Los Angeles.
