Francesca Mollett: Buried shadow
GRIMM is delighted to present Buried shadow, an exhibition of new paintings by Francesca Mollett, on view at the New York gallery from May 15 to June 18, 2026.
Francesca Mollett’s new paintings can be seen as a series of thresholds, moments and places that exist to give matter to form. Each painting in the show proposes a mode of presence and develops an interrogation of how to move between what is observed and the elasticity of abstraction. Agitated planes of colour emphasise the particular material conditions of each work, the contrasts of shadow and light often opening up the approach towards abstraction.
Indeed, Mollett’s paintings pulsate with life and energy, representing the seen effect of a phenomenon through both its physical form and the intensity of feeling experienced towards it. Marks on the canvas can be both delicate and seemingly hesitant, or direct and certain, seeking an exactness of expression in the fluctuation between moods that happen all at once, or brighten and dull momentarily, like weather. The quickness of transitions between impulse and consideration locate the paintings in a kind of prickly time; an awareness of times past within the painting, and the difficulty of marking, or coming into, the present.
In a number of the paintings, structures that resemble physical barriers translate into surfaces for light to move across, disorientating a viewing position towards the interior of the painting. Mollett has been considering the directionality of ‘towards’ within phenomenology and how it relates to painting, and how phenomenological experiences are always unfolding and do not become settled. The structures, freed from, yet conversing with their original locations, often have a distilled detail that everything else moves around.
There is a particular scene in Mercè Rodoreda’s Death in Spring, which chronicles the cruel behaviours and rituals of an allegorical village, where a small moment of hope and agency is felt amidst the perpetual violence. The protagonist’s step mother steps onto the clay sundial which has had its metal pin removed by the villagers who no longer want to know the time. Standing on the clay-base, she insists that she will be time, and the edge of the shadow is cast between hours. This opens up a momentary space for desire and agency.
Similarly, a narrative behind subject matter provides a means for thinking about time. Arrow to arrow depicts a shadow across the stairs of a bridge in Burgess Park, South London. The park was created in the aftermath of the blitz and the once well-used canal beneath the bridge was later buried. The transatlantic poet H.D. would speak of a rip in time that happened in the Blitz in London, between ancient time and local time. In ‘The walls do not fall’ she speaks of the frameless doorways that become like shrines and passages, and a burnt apple tree flowering. This bridge is like a mark of that tearing, existing outside of the context that created it, but it is also a painting about the force of a colour and how it can be misremembered.
Fragments and images such as these enter into an imaginary where they are not necessarily depicted but hover and land, populating the work with thoughts. Another interest in temporality Mollett cites is Gertrude Stein’s idea of a ‘continuous present’ in her 1926 essay Composition as Explanation, an abandonment of linear narrative in lieu of an ever-changing sense of the now. The moments and effects that Mollett depicts always carry this sense of intrigue about a non-fixed present and the possibility of transformation.
About the artist
Francesca Mollett (b. 1991, Bristol, UK) received her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London (UK) in 2020, having previously studied at the Royal Drawing School and Wimbledon College of Art, London (UK). Recent solo exhibitions include Annual Honesty, Modern Art, London (UK); Elsewhere, The Warehouse Dallas, TX (US); Corso, GRIMM, New York, NY (US); Noon, Pond Society, Shanghai (CN); Halves, GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL) and Low Sun, Micki Meng, San Francisco, CA (US); The Moth in the Moss, Taymour Grahne Projects, London (UK); Spiral Walking, Baert Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (US) and Wild Shade, Informality Gallery, London (UK).
Her work has also been featured in numerous group shows including MASA x Modern Art, Mexico City (MX); The Garden of Earthly Delights, GRIMM, New York, NY (US); In Other Worlds: Acts of Translation, The Roberts institute of Art, Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea (UK); A Room Hung With Thoughts: British Painting Now, curated by Tom Morton, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX (US); Nature Painting Nature, Pilar Corrias, London (UK); New British Abstraction, CICA, Vancouver (CA); Sabrina, curated by Russell Tovey, Sim Smith, London (UK) and New Romantics, The Artist Room at Lee Eugean Gallery, Seoul (KR) and The Kingfisher’s Wing, curated by Tom Morton, GRIMM, New York, NY (US).
Mollett’s work can be found in the Comico Art Museum Yufuin, Oita (JP); Dallas Museum of Art, TX (US); The David and Indrė Roberts Collection, London (UK); the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX (US); He Art Museum, Foshan (CN); Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL (US); K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong (HK); Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo (NL); Kunstmuseum, The Hague (NL); Pond Society, Shanghai (CN); the Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, TX (US); Sainsbury Centre, Norwich (UK) and The University of Oxford, St Hilda’s College Art Collection, Oxford (UK).
