Louise Giovanelli conjures theatrical glamour in spotlit new works

Louise Giovanelli paints faces with eyes closed and lips parted, hovering like ghosts across expanses of velvet drapery caught in theatre light. In her new series, which opens at White Cube Mason’s Yard this November, she layers these intimate portraits onto spotlit curtains in luminous blues, teals and warm greys, creating a layered conversation between the human subject and the fabric that frames it. The painting ‘Ad Astra’ (2026) exemplifies this visual dialogue: a face emerges softly against vertical pleats that shimmer with white highlights, each element acquiring something of the other’s sensuality and glamour.

The exhibition, ‘Louise Giovanelli: In the Light of False Suns’, marks her third solo presentation with the gallery and delves into the concept of cathexis, the investment of psychic energy directed toward a person, object or idea. By yoking the vulnerability of a closed face with the theatrical drama of stage curtains, Giovanelli creates a visual metaphor for how we project desire and emotion onto the world around us. The curtains become characters themselves, their folds and highlights speaking to the same sensuality as the faces they hold. Light becomes as much a subject as the figures themselves, falling in precise spots and soft gradations across the canvas.

The series works with oil on canvas, building layers of colour and translucency that reward close looking. The paintings oscillate between intimacy and spectacle, between the private interior of a face and the public grandeur of theatrical dressing. They suggest moments of longing, introspection and a kind of quiet desire caught in amber.

‘Louise Giovanelli: In the Light of False Suns’ runs from 20 November 2026 through 16 January 2027 at White Cube Mason’s Yard in London.

Imagery courtesy of White Cube (@whitecube).