Collezione Maramotti presents Mirages , the first solo exhibition in a European institution by the American artist Jenna Gribbon , who has conceived a new corpus of ten pictorial works specifically for the Collection's Pattern Room.

Gribbon often depicts people close to her: friends, son, partner, fellow artists. His paintings capture the complexities and dynamics within these relationships, addressing the implications inherent in seeing and being seen. The observer shares the artist's point of view in the scenes represented and is encouraged to explore the internal relationships of the work, between the artist and the subject, as well as the relationships beyond the canvas, between partners, family or friends. The intimacy and empathy of these relationships are absorbed in the gesture and pictorial language used by the artist to represent them.

The privileged subject of the paintings on display is the artist's companion, the musician Mackenzie Scott (TORRES). The protagonist is shaped by Gribbon with vivid colors and fluid, sensual brushstrokes, which seem to melt the different elements of the environment and her body into one another - a body reflected, molded, inspected, sometimes hypertrophied - on which the artist has experimented here on a scale and with unpublished compositions.

If in large paintings the visual energy of the images radiates from the distance - and the shapes become almost abstract as they approach the surface of the canvas -, the smaller works require a proximity, an intimate movement towards the inside of the work to grasp the details. and narrative developments.

In this project Gribbon continues his exploration of the gaze, introducing specific recurring figurative elements.

The mirror amplifies the rebound of the glances, also evoking the theme of the double, and the blindfold becomes a further piece for the construction of a narrative on power relations. The direct white beams of the lamps and the crackling glow of the fire combine with “green screen” backgrounds that refer to the brightness radiated by the screens, on which infinite visions can potentially be projected. Blind victim in search of tactile orientation or passive subject of investigation, goddess Fortuna or sleepy blindfolded deity of justice, creator of fictitious realities or seer caught in the act of divination, woman dissected with a sleight of hand or in an operating session, fiery or relaxed Phoenix A hiker, Mackenzie is a changing figure who encompasses and intertwines various iconographic and mythological associations, as well as scenes of everyday life, playful moments and stories of abuse.

Gribbon's figurative paintings draw inspiration from personal memories, art history and everyday experience, seamlessly combining different styles within the same canvas. By reworking photographs taken with his smartphone to “capture ideas”, the artist gives shape to portraits and scenarios with a cinematic cut, suspended between reality, fiction and imagination.

Bearers of a peculiar vision on a female universe in which beauty and pleasure act as political devices to unhinge traditional patriarchal and heterosexual schemes, her works place the observer within complex gaze relationships, in which one is involved as active subjects.

On the occasion of the exhibition, a book will be published with texts by Flavia Frigeri, art historian and curator, and the writer Alexandra Kleeman.

Visit with free admission during the opening hours of the permanent collection.

23 October 2022 : 2.30pm - 6.30pm

October 27, 2022 - February 19, 2023

Thursday and Friday 2.30pm - 6.30pm Saturday and Sunday 10.30am - 6.30pm

Closed: 1st November, 25th - 26th December, 1st and 6th January