Summer Rain Giangiacomo Rossetti

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. 

Accompanying Summer Rain at Archipelago, Solange Pessoa’s Insculptures – low clusters of pale soapstone – are displayed like waypoints. First exhibited on the Giardino delle Vergini at the 59th Venice Biennale, the series takes its name from the Latin insculptu (“cut into stone”). Quarried from her native Minas Gerais, “poor” and omnipresent soapstone once adorned colonial facades and now bears the scars of open-pit mining. Pessoa hopes that walking among them will spark a plurality of memories, latent sensations, and what she calls telluric experiences of time.

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. 

Giangiacomo Rossetti (b. 1989, Milan, Italy) lives and works in New York.

Rossetti attended the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan and in 2019 graduated from Die Institut Kunst FHNW in Basel. He has had solo exhibitions at Greene Naftali, New York (2024); Galleria Federico Vavassori, Milan (2024); The Power Station, Dallas (2023); Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2022); Galleria Federico Vavassori, Milan (2021); Fiorucci Art Trust, London (2021); Greene Naftali, New York (2020); Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2019); Riverside, Bern (2018); Federico Vavassori, Milan (2017); Warm, São Paulo (2016).

His work has been featured in several group exhibitions at Mendes Wood DM at d’Ouwe Kerke, Retranchement (2023); Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea,Rivoli (2022); David Zwirner, New York (2022); Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2022); Fondazione CRC, Cuneo (2021); Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2020); Mendes Wood DM at d’Ouwe Kerke, Retranchement (2020); Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Ghent (2020); Modern Art, London (2020); Greene Naftali Gallery, New York (2019); Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2018); Galleria Federico Vavassori, Milan (2018).

Solange Pessoa (b.1961, Ferros, Brazil) lives and works in Belo Horizonte. 

Her selected solo institutional exhibitions include Pilgrim Fields, Tramway, Glasgow (2025); Solange Pessoa, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2023); Longilonge, Ballroom Marfa, Marfa (2019); Metaflor-Metaflora, Museu Mineiro, Belo Horizonte (2013); Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (2008); Museu da Inconfidência, Ouro Preto (2000); Palácio das Artes, Belo Horizonte (1995); Centro Cultural São Paulo São Paulo(1992). 

Pessoa has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Brazil and abroad including Unravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles, Barbican Centre, London (2024); Fondation Cartier pour L’Art Contemporain, Triennale Milano, Milan (2024); 59th International Biennale di Venezia – The Milk of Dreams, Venice (2022); Reclaim the Earth, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022); Living Worlds, Fondation Cartier, Lille (2022); Elementos Vitales: Ana Mendieta in Oaxaca, OA Juarez, Oaxaca (2021); This Morning, in the Sweet Torpor of the Great Forest, is Like Every Morning in the World, SALT, Renens (2020); Invenção de Origem, Estação Pinacoteca, São Paulo (2018); La Fin de Babylone - Mich Wunder, dass ich so Fröhlich bin, Koln Skulptur #9, Cologne (2017); New Shamans (2016), High Anxiety (2016), and No Man’s Land: Women Artists (2015), Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Arte e Patrimônio, Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro (2014); Arqueologia das Terras Altas, 4th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre (2003) Mostra do Redescobrimento, CAPS Musée d’Art Contemporain, Bordeaux (2001).