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MASSIMODECARLO is delighted to present Light Holding, Jenna Gribbon’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The paintings question the feelings and implications of seeing and being seen through their exploration of performative, constructed and real intimacy. Occupying the artist’s point of view in the scenes, we are encouraged not only to look at the subject but invited to view Gribbon’s own experience of looking at them. Forced into this position, we become aware of our place in the triumvirate relationship between artist, subject and viewer.

Although all the works in Light Holding explore the close relationships between Gribbon and her partner Mackenzie Scott and her son, the exhibition can be divided into three series, dictated by scale, style, and the role played by the subject, artist and viewer. Paint, which Gribbon handles deftly and succinctly, is also applied with variety between the works, with brushstrokes loosening and widening in tandem with their growing scale.

The truest portrayals of intimacy are found in the smallest works: unflinchingly real tableaus from domestic life. Scott appears unaware of her role as a subject, surrendering them to a feeling of authentic reality. The lack of performance in the scenes transforms viewer into voyeur, while their soft lighting adds to their unstaged nature. The size of the paintings forces us to intrude as we must stand uncomfortably close to peer into a life that is not our own. Scott’s palpable physical discomfort in the scenes, such as the irritation to her eye (Something in her eye, 2021), mirrors the disquieting sense of being unwittingly watched.