White Cube (Bermondsey) – Louise Giovanelli: As If, Almost
8 July - 11 September, 2022
White Cube is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Louise Giovanelli, her first with the gallery. Taken from the Latin word ‘quasi’’ to mean ‘as if’, the title of the exhibition suggests images that carry the potential for further narratives and multiple ways of seeing.
Giovanelli’s figurative paintings occupy a space somewhere between representation and materiality, exploiting the physical properties of paint to create works that are located in the contemporary yet deeply rooted in the history of the medium. For this exhibition, the artist reflects on new modes of devotion in the modern world and the allure of pop stars, movie actors, TV and theatre shows, creating images that attest to the power of these constructs, in an era when so much of society is disengaged from religious and spiritual belief systems. Drawing on an increasingly image-led culture, her works distil moments of social ritual, while simultaneously exposing the mechanisms at work in myth-making and the constructs of social identity. Often using dramatically cropped or partial imagery, her figurative forms are created from a cloud of delicate marks to suggest the transient or the perhaps the transcendental; hazy, blurred images that also make parallels with the digital world. Using a gesso primed canvas which is then painted in multiple layers, their surfaces possess an otherworldly luminescence, as if self-illuminating.
