The Empathy and Everyday Magic of Jenna Gribbon’s Milan Debut

Following the announcement of her representation, artist Jenna Gribbon recently made her debut at MASSIMODECARLO’s Milan location with a new body of work that enters into an unexpectedly aesthetic and resonant dialogue with the gallery’s sumptuous interiors at the historic Casa Corbellini‑Wassermann—a rationalist-style residence built by architect Piero Portaluppi—while simultaneously asserting its own narrative. In her paintings, ideas about human relationships and the human condition are revealed in depictions of behavior set in the most intimate domestic spaces.

Here, the New York-based artist furthers her ongoing exploration of the infinite possibilities of representation through an investigation of light and its sources, which she began in her previous exhibition at the gallery’s London location, her first since joining the roster. “I was definitely grappling with the nature of reality, which feels like shifting sand these days,” Gribbon told Observer, her voice rising. She invited her partner, musician Mackenzie Ruth Scott, to write a more poetic text for the exhibition because she didn’t want to demystify the paintings. “What I’m getting at in this work is a bit beyond what I’m able to put into words.”

In the text accompanying Gribbon’s paintings, Scott reflects on the idea of the invisibility of everything that lies beyond our perception—even beyond the electromagnetic spectrum of light she explored in her previous show. In this new body of work, Gribbon is tapping into a more spiritual, emotional and universal realm and shifting her focus toward what is more invisible than visible in the representation of human figures and in the way we perceive reality.

The subjects in Milan feel far less confrontational, as if they’ve turned inward, disengaging from the outside world to dwell in a more intimate space of emotion and inner life. As Gribbon explains, while it was once important to her that the paintings be clear and direct about how they functioned, she has now become more comfortable with ambiguity. “In previous works, I wanted to pull back the curtain on all of the mechanisms I was using to highlight the relationship between subject and viewer,” she reflected. “I still want these paintings to be legible, but in this body of work, I gravitated toward imagery that takes time to decipher.”

Even the titles have taken on a quieter, more enigmatic tone, guiding us toward something softer, more mysterious or attuned to the inner self—rather than simply reflecting external reality as perceived by the senses and translated by the brush. “A lot of my titles over the years refer to the way that light influences perception,” she said, pointing to previous solo shows like “When I Looked at You the Light Changed” and “Mirages.” But in this exhibition, she goes further, reaching toward something largely ineffable or imperceptible. The highly evocative title “Rainbows in Shadows” emerges from these reflections. “What I like about the idea of a rainbow in shadow is the impossibility of the thing. A rainbow needs light to exist. So if a rainbow exists in shadow, it’s magic. I think these paintings are a search for magic in the shadows.”

This entire body of work is a departure from more self-contained explorations toward a broader reflection on the limits and boundaries of the human condition and experience. “I’ve been focusing on the microcosm of my own home as a refuge from all of the horrors of the outside world,” Gribbon said, as if the inner world were the only remaining sanctuary for care and affection amid the current state of chaos. “These are paintings about living vividly in dark times.”

Yet while the focus of this show is in that sense myopic, its themes of family and domesticity are deeply universal—the first anchors many reach for in the search for meaning amid the fragility of the human condition. “I was trying to use the small stage of my home to describe something much larger,” she explained. “A feeling of wonder and fascination with day-to-day interconnection, and an engagement with the exercise of seeing one another on a continual basis.”

Many of the new paintings flash like memories or blurred postcards from the past, pressing against the limits of sensory experience and our ability to hold onto fleeting moments that live in other dimensions of meaning, often beyond the physical or perceptible. “When I’m staring hard at something I’m painting, I often see really vivid colors buried under other colors that subdue them,” Gribbon confessed. “In making these paintings, I did this very literal thing of pulling forward the colors that are harder to see.”

Here, her subjects often confront themselves in mirrors before meeting the viewer’s gaze, further complicating the longstanding narrative of the male gaze and the passive female subject in art history. What she paints now are women turned inward, searching for a deeper, inner energetic source. And yet, as Gribbon continues to stage these intimate, almost secret small rituals of care and love shared with her partner, something essential about human nature is subtly revealed.

Throughout the show, the viewer is caught between intimacy and voyeurism or between image consumption and production and left in a delicate space of emotional and psychological ambiguity, as the moments Gribbon brings to life resist straightforward narrative reading. “I’m always looking for ways to give the viewer a new experience with looking,” she said. “My hope is that someone engaging with my work can sense my humanity in the way I’ve seen my subject and worked the paint, and at the same time connect with the humanity of my subjects.”

For her, painting becomes an exercise in human reading that transcends anthropology or psychology—an act of empathy aimed at capturing both the essence and the call of an individual soul, situated within the larger entanglement of lives and existences from which meaning emerges. “Because empathy is revelatory and profound,” she asserted, affirming her belief that painting and art more broadly are an extension of our capacity to understand others and the world. A blend of imaginative and empathic forces, capable of translating the deepest truths of her subjects—even the ones they themselves may not fully recognize and might struggle to imagine.

What Gribbon seeks to capture through the sensual, tactile medium of painting is the subtle energetic aura each of us carries, consciously or not, and which tends to reveal itself only when we move beyond an individualistic lens to approach the world with emotional and spiritual openness. Empathy for other humans, living beings and the universe at large is revealed as what makes a more soulful, heartfelt way of living possible.

“It’s like when you do psychedelic drugs and suddenly something mundane is revealed as poignant,” Gribbon said, describing the kind of sudden epiphany that can arise from something as ordinary as a cup on a table. “You can see that it’s sitting in a perfect way, accompanied by a nearby object that’s creating a perfect color relationship.” This type of reflection echoes those of Black Elk, the Lakota Sioux medicine man, who once said that peace comes to the souls of men when they realize their relationship—their oneness—with the universe and all its powers, and when they understand that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, within each of us.

“It’s not that the magic wasn’t there before; it just required a certain kind of attention to be perceived,” the artist concluded. “Painting is especially good at framing things that might otherwise be overlooked and revealing their hidden magic.”

Jenna Gribbon’s “Rainbow in Shadows” is on view at MASSIMODECARLO in Milan through September 6, 2025. 

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