GABRIELLA KIRBY | Future Light: SOLO EXHIBITION · Castello 780 · Venice, Italy

When time keeps moving forward, but the mind plays on loop and the body’s systems, movements and expressions autonomously halt, shift, cower, expand. 

Future Light, presents a collection of mixed media paintings on canvas, paper and plaster, that reflect on the internal landscape of vulnerability that we traverse in connecting to the world around us. Gabriella Kirby's work aims to investigate the intricacies of self-preservation, transformation and narrative, as the mind and body process a traumatic experience and how we move through life after it.

Perceptivity develops as its own independent sense and morphs into a new skill -- an aid that scans, interprets and adjusts to maneuver through ones’ environment. Future Light surveys several species - from plant to animal to human - and focuses on the protective, communicative and life giving parts that adapt and evolve, while holding an awareness of potential future threat.

A series of fractured marks and plumes of atmospheric traces evokes the passage of an entity through space. Broken lines of nervous hands attempt to mend, twist, and grasp. Webs of silky milkweed seeds billow, scatter, then wither while fuzzy anthers, tracked and trailing, are spliced by time. The sound waves of birds and whales, whose pitch is rendered indecipherable to humans, rupture and radiate. Drawn marks scrape and carve their way into the plaster’s surface, a material whose inherent sensitivity holds dueling qualities of fragility and strength. Transparent washes of color flood and swiftly absorb into the raw canvas. Nothing can hide on these exposed surfaces. Line mirrors vulnerability; both describe the distance between two points, with the ability to simultaneously separate and connect. 

The exhibition is structured to read as a poem. Artwork titles span the length of the gallery walls, and depending on which side the viewer begins, the outcome will end on a different note- teetering on the edge of uncertainty or alternatively, in a new light. 

About Gabriella Kirby- Gabriella Kirby holds a BFA from Tufts University and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as well as an AA with High Distinction in Design from the Art Institute of Portland. Her artwork has been exhibited in galleries throughout the Hudson Valley and NYC, as well as Portland, OR; Vancouver, WA; Laguna Beach, CA; London, England; and projects include a public art earthwork in Ashland, OR; and installation artist contributor at The Museum of Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA. Her paintings have been featured in Vanity Fair London. Her work is held in the private collection at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She lives and works in upstate New York.