Stormy skies, says Ernesto. He grieved for them. Summer rain. Childhood.

(Marguerite Duras, Summer rain [La pluie d’été, Gallimard, 1990])

Mendes Wood DM is pleased to present Summer rain, an exhibition by Giangiacomo Rossetti at the gallery’s Germantown space. The show follows Rossetti’s 2024 residency in Germantown.

In the exhibition, conjured atmospheres trace rituals of lightness and gravity, pointing to quiet structures beneath everyday moments. The title comes from a Duras novella set along the Seine in Ivry. At its center is Ernesto, a prodigious child from a poor Italian immigrant family, perhaps from the Po River Valley. Ernesto refuses school, saying, “I am not going back to school because at school they teach me things I don’t know.”

Time in Duras’s novella, saliently, folds in on itself; characters reappear, gestures recur. A quiet space outside the arc of explanation, a sense of distance just far enough to observe.

According to some, Ernesto eventually leaves the suburbs and his humble origins to become a respected man of science.

The three paintings in the exhibition depict three subjects who ventured into the world at different times in their lives.

Along with the paintings are some objects that hold space for things that are absent – like a lamp hanging low from the ceiling, as if the table beneath it was taken away – an echo of the domestic and pastoral history of the exhibition space.

Two light fixtures feature shades made from painted monotypes, drawing from two early works Picabia made during his brief Orphic period. One was inspired by the dancer Stacia Napierkowska, whom Picabia encountered aboard an ocean liner en route to America.

The artist’s given name, Giangiacomo Orfeo Rossetti, was amended when he obtained his American passport to avoid document incongruence; Orfeo was removed.

In 2022, Mendes Wood DM opened Archipelago, an exhibition and residency space in Germantown, NY, established to create a contemplative environment for ideas, creation, and exchange.