GINEVRA SHAY
MEADOW’S BLISTERING BERRY
SEPTEMBER 7 - OCTOBER 16, 2021
MEET THE ARTIST
Friday, September 10 | 6 PM - 8 PM
If a chromosomal network undergirds all life to its phasing, what is genetic feeling? Everything is synthetic. Or everything is mapped by the inversion of flesh. Or object begets object. One may be followed by a sense that the skin of Life can only be touched and not felt. The assemblage of color and form into space brings forth the reverberant qualities of material. This is the painterly task. The florist works in the medium of arrangement, in the material field of fluorescence, in the system of meaning nearest to Life. And so we receive a meadow’s blistering berry.
Let us evade establishing empiric distinction in favor of disclosing the marvel of heterogeneity through light. Difference is a particle. Let us not think so closely to our shape that we would reveal anything in particular. There being no world behind the blur. Let us shift between bodies in some hotel room, away from the blinking penalty of the city. Let us follow the bee, sensing our flowers by a subcurrent. Likenesses and divergence, numerousness, the length to which one could possibly unfold oneself, hue, light, and the way we respond to all these waves that fill our time. All such possibilities, let us actualize a light beam of becoming where each petal not need be specific.
Text by Nora Treatbaby
Pentimenti Gallery welcomes the fall with a solo exhibition of the photographs of Ginevra Shay. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition at Pentimenti Gallery.
In Meadow’s Blistering Berry, Shay presents a series of unique chromogenic and silver gelatin photographs. The work is layered and luminous, often comprised of multiple colorcast overlays, and is hand-printed by the artist in color and black and white darkrooms.
Shay’s abstract photography defies easy entry or interpretation as it seeks to dismember the medium’s tendency toward structure and lucidity. Motifs of interiors and natural environments are present in the work, but they are obscured and voided of context, placed instead into fields of glowing color, or decontextualized in monochrome. Process and narrative are entangled in the work, as time and space bend to form a high-contrast vision of a reality intrinsic to dreams and film.
Shay’s work generates a visual poetry that observes and remarks on both the social and cultural conditions from which it was wrought, as well as its own process of generation. Shay operates on the edges of ability and possibility, and from this space develops both an intense depth and a wry sense of self-reflexive humor. The imagery deconstructs and reconstructs itself, simultaneously engendering the chaos of lived experience, and attempting to decipher it. The deeply compelling images carry worlds of association while maintaining an airiness and a levity that elevate them from the material world, into a conceptual space of light and ether.
The exhibition has been selected to be a part of the 20/20 Photo Festival, taking place throughout the city of Philadelphia during the month of September.
Ginevra Shay received their BA from the University of Vermont. They are a current MFA candidate at the Milton Avery School at Bard College. They have exhibited at Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX; Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium; PHROOM, Odessa, Ukraine; JEST, Turin, Italy; Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, NY; Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA; amidst many others. Their work resides in public collections including Yale University Art Gallery Library, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, International Center for Photography, Indie Photobook Library, Houston Center for Photography, and many others. They are a Maryland Individual Artist Award recipient for photography.
For all inquiries, please contact us at mail@pentimenti.com or +1 215.625.9990.