Soft Grip | General Assembly
This group show is themed loosely around the “female body as a site of tension”. The perfect topic for the American painter Jenna Gribbon, who’s featured in the exhibition.
It’s a small work called Seaside Wrestlers, from 2018. But while the title suggests something playful and sunny, what’s depicted is darker. Quite literally, considering Gribbon’s wrestlers are wrestling at night, lit by the moon. The sea is a few careless green streaks. The (female) fighters are contorted, their faces turned away. To pinch the scene further, one treads on a virulently red lobster.
I’ve been fascinated by Gribbon’s work, since I saw (and wrote about) a show of hers in London in 2022. These were larger, looser, later oil paintings, depicting the artist’s wife in some epically uncomfortable poses.
“She plays with how we look and how we’re looked at, offering scenes that are at once playful and charged with deeper undercurrents of intimacy, power, and role-play,” the show notes state. I don’t see play, though. I see uncomfortable struggle. Something compelling enough to notice and write about, twice now. May the struggle continue.
Soft Grip is at General Assembly (London). 19 September - 04 October 2025