Artist: Louise Giovanelli

GRIMM presents a solo exhibition of new paintings by Louise Giovanelli. This is the Manchester-based artist’s fourth solo exhibition at GRIMM, and her third at the New York gallery.

In addition to large-scale paintings from the artist’s ongoing series of curtains, where gloriously rendered fabrics cast an impenetrability between the viewer and object, the exhibition will include a new series of paintings titled Entheogen. The series features an appropriated 1970s film still image of a young woman in a moment of spiritual reverie taking the Eucharist. Giovanelli repeats the image across the series of works, though distinguishes each with subtle and deft variations of cropping and color that prompt closer viewing and deeper contemplation. The narrative implications of the image become increasingly elusive, as the religious underpinnings of the subject’s euphoric state begin to shift towards more provocative interpretation. The title Entheogen, which refers to psychoactive substances often used in ritual and spiritual contexts, reinforces this narrative ambiguity where tropes of religious iconography, hallucinogenic drugs, and sexual revelation coalesce.

Louise Giovanelli (b. 1993, London, UK) lives and works in Manchester (UK). She completed her postgraduate studies at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main (DE) with Professor Amy Sillman in 2020, after having earned a Bachelor’s Degree (B.A. Hons, Fine Art) at the Manchester School of Art, Manchester (UK) in 2015.