Following the announcement of her representation, artist Jenna Gribbon recently made her debug at MASSIMODECARLO’s Milan location with a new body of work that enters into an unexpectedly aesthetic and resonant dialogue with the gallery’s seventeenth interiors at the historic Casa Corbellini‑Wassermann—a rationalist-style residence built by architect Piero Portaluppi—while slightly asserting its own In her paintings, ideas about relationships and human conditions are revealed in portraying behaviors in the closest family space.
Here, the New York artist further explores her exploration of the infinite possibilities of representation by investigating Light and its sources, which she began in the last exhibition in the gallery London, for the first time since joining the lineup. Griban told Observer that her voice rose, “I absolutely worked hard to the essence of reality, just like the changes these days.” She invited her partner, musician Mackenzie Ruth Scott, to write more poetic text for the exhibition because she didn’t want to uncover the paintings. “What I get in this job is a little bit far more than I can say.”
In the texts painted by Gribbon, Scott reflects everything beyond our view, even beyond the electromagnetic spectrum she explored in her last show. In this new work, Griben is leveraging a more spiritual, emotional and universal realm and turning her attention to the representation of the characters and the visible in our way of reality than visible.
Milan’s themes feel less confrontational, as if they have turned inward, separated from the outside, and lived in a more intimate space of emotions and inner life. As Gribbon explains, while for her, the paintings were clear and direct about how they worked, she now became more satisfied with the ambiguity. “In previous works, I wanted to withdraw all the mechanisms I used to highlight the curtains that highlight the relationship between the subject and the audience,” she reflected. “I still want the paintings to be clear, but in this work, I tend toward images that require time to decipher.”
Even the title adopts a quieter, more mysterious tone that leads us toward a softer, more mysterious or more appropriate self rather than simply reflecting the external reality perceived by the senses and translated by the brush. “Over the years, many of my titles have referred to the way light affects perception,” she said. But in this exhibition, she went further, towards something largely unspeakable or undetectable. These reflections emerged with the highly evocative title, “Rainbow in the Shadow.” “I like the idea of a rainbow in the shadows is impossible for things. A rainbow needs light.
This entire work is a broader reflection of the limits and boundaries of human condition and experience from more independent exploration. “I have always focused on the microcosm of my own home to take refuge,” Griben said. “These are paintings about living vividly in the dark times.”
However, while the focus of this show is myopia, its family and family themes are profoundly universal – initially what many people pursue when seeking meaning in the vulnerability of the human condition. “I tried to use the small phases of my house to describe something bigger,” she explained. “The wonders and obsession with everyday interconnections, and the interactions with constant meetings.”
Many new paintings flash with memory or blurry postcards like the past, clinging to the limitations of sensory experiences and the brief moments in which we insist on living in other senses, often beyond the physical or perceptible range. “When I stare at what I paint, I often see really bright colors buried under other colors that subdue them,” Griben admitted. “I did this very literal thing when I was making these paintings, pushing the hard-to-see colors forward.”
Here, her themes are often in the mirror to the audience’s gaze, further complicating the long-term narrative of male gaze and the passive female themes in art history. What she now paints is a woman turning inward, looking for a deeper source of inner vitality. However, as Griben continues to stage these intimate, almost secret rituals of care and love, she shares important things about human nature with her partner.
Throughout the show, the audience is attracted between intimacy and voyeurism or between image consumption and production, and remains in the delicate space of emotional and psychological ambiguity, as Gribin brings moments of life that can resist straightforward narrative reading. “I’m always looking for ways to bring new experiences to the audience,” she said. “My hope is that people who interact with my work can feel my humanity, just as I’ve seen my subject and worked hard to paint while being connected to the humanity of my subject.”
For her, painting became an exercise in human reading beyond anthropology or psychology, a sympathetic act designed to capture the essence and call of an individual soul, which is located in the greater life and existence where the meaning emerges. “Because compassion is revealing and profound,” she asserted, believing that painting and art are more broadly an extension of our ability to understand others and the world. The fusion of imaginative and empathetic powers is able to translate the deepest truths of her subjects, even if they themselves may not fully recognize and may be unimaginable.
What Gribbon tries to capture through the sensual medium of painting is that each of us has a subtle and vibrant aura that is consciously or not, tends to self-reveal only when we move beyond the lens of individualism to approach the world in an emotional and spiritual open way. Empathy for other humans, living things, and the universe as a whole is revealed to make a more soulful, heartfelt way of life possible.
“It’s like when you take drugs and suddenly be revealed as poignant by some mundane drug,” Griben said. “You can see it sit in a perfect way and accompany the nearby object that establishes a perfect color relationship.” This reflection echoes the reflection of the Black Elk, the Lakota Suu medical man who once said that when they realize their relationship (their relationship-their unity), peace with the universe and all its powers, and when they understand the center of the universe, this center is the great spirit, and that center is actually each of us inside, in us, around us.
“This is not to say that magic did not exist before; it just requires a kind of attention from people,” the artist concluded. “Painting is especially good at building things that may be overlooked and reveal its hidden magic.”
Jenna Gribbon’s “Rainbow in Shadows” unfolds in Massimodecarlo in Milan until 6 September 2025.
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