LOUISE GIOVANELLI

Lives and works in Manchester (UK)

Much concerned with stillness and anticipation – what is, isn’t, and might soon be seen – Louise Giovanelli’s work turns on charged atmospheres and suggestive details, in which light, having been transmuted into paint, attains a dense, glinting physicality. Drawing her imagery from sources as diverse as Renaissance art, vintage film stills, and contemporary popular entertainers, her intensely worked canvases often focus on the staging of rituals and performances (religious, theatrical, social), while their jewelled palette and shallow pictorial space compels us to linger on their surfaces, slowing down the act of looking to something close to a meditative encounter, and underlining painting’s status as a system of representation, in which meaning is created in the meeting of medium and support.

Giovanelli graduated from the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main (DE) where she studied with Professor Amy Sillman. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Art from the Manchester School of Art (UK) in 2015.

Recent exhibitions include Still Moving, GRIMM, New York, NY (US); Louise Giovanelli: A Song of Ascents, Hepworth Wakefield, Yorkshire (UK); Immortal Apples, Eternal Eggs, Hastings Contemporary, Hastings (UK); Here on Earth, White Cube, Hong Kong (HK); Louise Giovanelli - Paintings 2019 - 2024, He Art Museum (HEM), Foshan (CN); Soothsay, GRIMM, New York, NY (US); Always Different, Always the Same, Moon Grove, Manchester (UK); The Sea, the Sky, a Window, Hill Art Foundation, New York, NY (US); The Embodied Spirit, White Cube, Seoul (KR); In New York, Thinking of You, The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY (US) and New British Abstraction, CICA, Vancouver (CA).

Selected collections: AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Amsterdam (NL); Centraal Museum, Utrecht (NL); Fundacion Medianoche0, Granada (ES); The Grundy Gallery Collection (UK); Hall Art Foundation (DE, US); He Art Museum, Foshan (CN); Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL (US); Longlati Foundation (CN); Manchester Art Gallery Collection (UK); MOCA, Los Angeles, CA (US); The National Museum (NO); Tate, London (UK); Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (UK); Yuz Museum Shanghai (CN) and a number of private collections.

Courtesy GRIMM