Jenna Gribbon: TEFAF New York with Lévy Gorvy Dayan
TEFAF, New York, NY

New York—Lévy Gorvy Dayan is delighted to present a solo booth of new paintings by Brooklyn-based artist Jenna Gribbon at TEFAF New York.

Gribbon’s small-format works function diaristically—portraying intimate scenes from her daily life. The cycle of paintings debuting at TEFAF represent Gribbon’s wife and frequent subject, the musician Mackenzie Scott, seen from behind in lush natural settings across the United States—from the woods of Fire Island, New York, to the lakes of Tennessee, to wilds of Georgia, and the canyons of New Mexico.

With these compositions, Gribbon engages the symbol of the Rückenfigur, or turned figure, of Romanticism, made renowned by Caspar David Friedrich. Her positioning of Mackenzie invites the viewer to experience the subject’s perspective of the beheld landscape, while simultaneously withholding what she sees.

Gribbon’s pastoral vistas also gesture toward her longstanding interest in Impressionism. Here, she emphasizes the interplay of light and color—while enhancing her tones to create an effect of surreality in the dappled sunlight streaming through flora or glinting off of open water. In Into the irises (2026), deftly articulated leaves and petals give way to an abstractly rendered foreground, while in In pursuit of a Crossville fish (2026), detailed ripples expand to broad strokes of vibrant pigment.

As Gribbon created these paintings, the couple was also confronting the grief and loss of Mackenzie’s father, who passed away earlier this year. While Gribbon’s project is based on the reciprocal, entwined gaze and the challenge of observing someone in close proximity over time—here, the artist’s small remove from her wife intimately reflects the distance and solitude created by grief. Personally felt, her new paintings tenderly represent visions of a loved one on a journey of mourning, while encompassing the essences of companionship, nature, and mortality.

Photography by Elisabeth Bernstein, courtesy Lévy Gorvy Dayan.