BERLIN.- Shimmering, iridescent forms that curve, bend, push, squeeze, hold and expand. Brazilian artist Gabriela Giroletti’s latest paintings take the form of shaped surfaces that evoke shards of crystal and stone, earthly textures, bodily processes, the transference of energy and elemental movement. Among ripples and folds, her fourth solo exhibition with Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, comprises all new work born out of a period of play and experimentation.
For Giroletti, art-making has always balanced instinct with control, but her process is evolving. Where she once followed the interaction of colour and paint, she now begins by constructing her surfaces – cutting, sanding, and gluing pieces of wood until she reaches the desired shape. This shape becomes a container onto which she works more quickly and fluidly, allowing forms to emerge organically before she applies dark outlines that serve both as barriers and supports. Giroletti likens these lines to a form of writing: they are the artist taking hold of her material and leaving her mark, while also guiding the eye and suggesting shifting atmospheres, emotions, and movements.
In two small paintings, the lines dominate the composition, forming grid-like patterns that reveal windows of swirling colour and pulsating energy. In other works, they’re more expressive, suggesting tunnel systems, the interior of a body or strange mechanical forms. Elsewhere, they appear stuttered and textural like grooves in bark, ripples on water, visual static – something hesitant or emerging.
Over recent years, Giroletti’s palette has shifted from deep, earthy tones to the brighter, luminescent hues we see in this exhibition. This change has been influenced by a recent trip back to Brazil, by her studio surroundings and the seasons – most of these works were made during the summer – as well as an increasing fascination with exploring light. For this exhibition, she has experimented with different starting points for her paintings: some began on white surfaces, others on black. While only subtle visual traces remain in the final composition, Giroletti is interested in whether we might sense the light or darkness from which the work grew, and how it might affect our response, even on a subconscious level.
Among ripples and folds, the show's title, hints at something both hidden and magical - an invitation into spaces that resist fixed meaning. It evokes a tension between contraction and expansion: folding inwards into intimate, tucked, overlapping forms, while also rippling outwards - fluid, continuous, reaching toward infinite possibilities. We’re invited not just to look at Giroletti’s surfaces, but to drop into them, to focus less on what they represent and more on how we might embody or move through them.
Gabriela Giroletti (b. 1982) is a Brazilian painter, living and working in London. In 2018, she received her MFA in Painting (distinction) from the UCL, Slade School of Fine Art, where she held a position as an Honorary Research Fellow from 2019-2020. In 2015, Giroletti graduated with a BA in Fine Arts (first class) from the Middlesex University, London. In her work, Gabriela Giroletti explores the relationship between the painted image (the meaning, the immaterial, the metaphor, the mind) and the material presence in the painting (the corporeal, the touch, the physical presence, the body). Deliberately ambiguous, the paintings fluctuate between their crude materiality and their metaphysical aspect, encouraging the viewer to formulate peculiar connections with our tangible surroundings, as well as with individual and unique lived experience.
Solo exhibitions include Mil Minhãs, Galerie Leme, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); Inevitable Orbits, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, West Palm Beach, USA (2024); Backslash Gallery, Paris (2024); Mingling Currents, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2023); Moon, Commonage Projects, London, UK (2023); Breezy, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London, UK (2021); At Once and a Touch Away, Studio KIND, Braunton, UK (2021); Solo presentation at the Viewing Room, Thames Side Studios, London (2019).
Highlights and Collections
In 2021 Gabriela Giroletti was a recipient of the Eaton Project grant. In addition, Giroletti has been awarded several other prestigious awards including the Freelands Foundation Emergency grant and the Unit 1 Gallery Workshop grant in 2020. Giroletti is also a 2019 Bloomberg New Contemporaries artist and was shortlisted for the Hix Award that same year. In 2018, Giroletti received the Desiree Painting Prize and was also the runner up for the Chadwell Award as well as was shortlisted for the Elephant x Griffin Prize and the Young Contemporary Talent Purchase Prize by the Ingram Collection of Modern British Art.
Giroletti’s work is included in private and public collections worldwide including Rio Grande do Sul Museum of Art, Brazil and the Jasteka Foundation collection.
