Jo Gamel’s pluridisciplinaire practice ponders how the unknowable mysteries of nature and the universe are displaced by erroneous Romanized systems, particularly those constructs of the 18th century. The harm and charm of snake oil continues in health and beauty products, echoing the hoodwinking wisdom of a fictional, romanticized medicine man who would doubt cast on our instincts and intuition to this day. Gamel uses natural and neoclassical objects as an allegory for the human figure to create eerie altars of miracle and dramaturgy in layered mixed-media, polychromatic palettes, academic brushwork, and magical realism.

Jo Gamel lives and works in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She earned her BFA with high honors from Moore College of Art & Design, where she received the Emerging Leaders In The Arts scholarship and the Excellence in Painting Award, which supported her research of Eastern Baroque architecture in St. Petersburg. Gamel has also received several honors, including the Women in Art Excellence Award from Artio Gallery in London, and First Place and Best in Show at the Art Is Cool contest. Gamel has exhibited her work internationally at institutions such as the Louvre (Paris, during Paris+ Art Basel), Chelsea Old Town Hall (London, during London Art Week), the European Museum of Modern Art (Barcelona), and Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens. She is an alumnus of the residency program Governor’s School of the Arts. Her work is held in private collections in Seattle, Portland, L.A., New York City, Philadelphia, Ankara, Stockholm, and Gothenburg; and has been featured in Create! Magazine, Killer Magazine, and on the full-color front page of the Salem Sunbeam newspaper.