Intimacy itself as a creative force: new exhibition at Rose Art Museum

Brandeis Stories

Intimacy itself as a creative force: new exhibition at Rose Art Museum

July 28, 2026 • Arts

A new exhibition at the Rose Art Museum represents the first major solo museum exhibition dedicated to the work of acclaimed contemporary painter Jenna Gribbon.

"Jenna Gribbon: Entwined" brings together more than 40 paintings, spanning 2001 to the present, and includes three new commissions created for the exhibition. It offers the most comprehensive presentation of Gribbon's work to date.

Co-curated by Chad Sirois and Gannit Ankori, Henry and Lois Foster Director and Chief Curator of the Rose Art Museum, the exhibition will be on view from Aug. 19 through Jan. 3, 2027.

Occupying the museum's expansive Lois Foster Wing, the exhibition traces the evolution of her practice from early experimental works informed by art-historical precedents to the luminous portraits that have established her as one of the leading figurative painters of her generation.

"Throughout its history, the Rose has championed artists whose work expands the formal and expressive possibilities of contemporary art while also engaging with poignant issues related to our world and our times," Ankori said. "Jenna Gribbon's paintings are intellectually rigorous, rich with emotional resonance, and formally innovative. Entwined presents powerful work that delights the senses and encourages us to engage deeply with themes pertaining to the human condition."

Beginning with works made in 2001, "Entwined" follows Gribbon's development from paintings informed by surrealism, theatricality, and symbolic imagery to the psychologically charged portraits and domestic scenes for which she is now celebrated.

Frequently depicting those closest to her - most notably her wife, musician Mackenzie Scott, known professionally as TORRES - Gribbon transforms everyday encounters into meditations on inseparability, desire, perception, and selfhood. Her paintings draw viewers into a world where personal relationships become the foundation for exploring broader questions of identity and representation.

At the heart of Gribbon's practice is an engagement with relational psychology, a school of thought that understands subjectivity as something formed through encounters with others. Her imagery blurs the boundaries between portraiture and self-portraiture through reflections, shadows, and doubled perspectives that place traces of the artist within the paintings themselves. In doing so, Gribbon challenges conventional distinctions between artist and subject, revealing identity as fluid, contingent, and shaped through acts of recognition and exchange.

The exhibition culminates with three new paintings created specifically for the Rose. Centered on closely cropped, three-quarter-length portraits of Mackenzie Scott, these works introduce a striking new chapter in Gribbon's practice. Her own face is projected across Scott's features and body, creating ghostly double images charged with psychological intensity. Rather than suggesting that one figure simply becomes the other, these layered compositions evoke a shared relational space where identities remain fluid, overlapping, and continually in formation. In these ambitious new paintings, Gribbon proposes intimacy itself as a creative force-one capable of producing new forms of subjectivity shaped through love, desire, and lived experience.

"'Entwined' demonstrates that Gribbon's most significant contribution lies not simply in reinventing portraiture, but in expanding what painting can tell us about the formation of identity," said Sirois. "Across more than two decades of work, she develops a visual language in which subjectivity emerges through relationship rather than autonomy. The exhibition reveals the remarkable coherence of that inquiry and positions Gribbon among the most innovative figurative painters working today."

A free public opening reception will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, at the museum. Lead support for "Jenna Gribbon: Entwined" is provided by Further Forward Foundation. Major support is provided by Wolf Kahn Foundation, with additional support from Heather and Theodore Karatz.