In her new paintings, we see a few figures, some things scattered about the plane, minimal hints to places and locations: rubblyroadsides and barren parking garages. They are rememberedplaces. Places, she recalls, ‘one has been to, which then go on toexist in the mind without being fully realised ... memories the size ofa postcard.’ The paintings are of a striking stillness and simplicity.Yet, it’s 2022 and their emblematic tenderness, is rather, as Weaversays, ‘seen through the desolate crumminess of Eliot’s Waste Landor Beckett’s Godot.’

Modestly, Weaver presents one or two recurring characters amid their daily habits and routines: picking up groceries, taking out thetrash, lugging deposit bottles to the Pfand, and just checking in withone another. The couples appear alternatingly close and distant,speaking and listening, at ease and on edge. Weaver is engaged infinding a tenuous equilibrium of these couples as two pictorialforces – a logic that nods to Masaccio’s Expulsion from the Gardenof Eden, Baselitz’s The Great Friends and Munch’s lovers. Amongthem, Weaver places five new paintings of a woman’s head, each ofthem thoughtfully lost in herself. The heads are painted up close intoa thick white ground – perhaps they are narrators, leaning in to tell astory. In this way, the exhibition constantly shifts between splendidpresence and restrained intimacy.

Weaver’s palette is part of an ‘overall wish to be closer to reality’ – asphalt black, fleshy pinks, athleisure neutrals, off-whites, warm tertiary colours and touches of over-bright highlighter hues. The larger-than-life ‘trash-scapes’ come from tenebrism and a lineage ofpainters who employed a dark ground in a broad range of manners:Uccello, de la Tour, El Greco, Matisse, Beckmann, Guston,Dubuffet, Golub, Baselitz and Förg.

Painted wet-into-wet in pastose oil paint with over-sized brushes, there’s an immediate feel of urgency to all of her paintings. Formsare streamlined and brushstrokes are emphatic. Everything is of thesame matter and flattened upon the pictorial surface. The figures,grounds and objects are all interwoven, thereby creating a tapestry,quilt or ornamental mosaic of the everyday. Weaver gets up close,not merely transcribing her surroundings into paint, but being rightamong them instead. Her ‘trash-scapes’ suggest that there issomething to be found in the overlooked and cast-off. That there ismeaning to be gleaned from the most insignificant aspects of ourmundane lives.

Grace Weaver (b. 1989, Vermont) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been held ininternational institutions including Oldenburger Kunstverein (2019);Kunstpalais Erlangen (2019); Kunstverein Reutlingen (2017); andDakshina Chitra, Chennai (2012). Weaver’s work has also beenexhibited in group exhibitions including the Miettinen Collection,Berlin (2022); Neue Galerie, Gladbeck (2022); Villa Merkel,Esslingen (2022); Kunstmuseum Ravensburg (2021); GalerieWedding, Berlin (2018); ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus (2016);Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Burlington (2012); andNewcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne (2010).

Weaver’s works are in the collections of ARoS Aarhus Art Museum; FRAC des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou; and Pizzuti Collection of theColumbus Museum of Art.