Shifting

Glass Rice is proud to present Shifting a new body of work by Caroline Pinney in her debut solo show. The exhibition gathers paintings that dwell within states of transition - where identity, relationship, and selfhood remain fluid, porous, and unresolved. As the artist reflects, “Shifting is a quiet record of who I was and who I’m becoming… The work isn’t about arrival, it’s about staying inside the change long enough to see what new form appears.” Pinney’s paintings are populated by loosely rendered figures that cluster, overlap, and lean into one another. Bodies press forward and recede, limbs arc expansively across the picture plane, and faces remain partially obscured or flattened into profile. These figures do not perform a narrative, but rather occupy a shared emotional weather - suggesting moments of solidarity, tension, intimacy, and pause. Social interaction is rendered as a lived, embodied condition. Her surfaces are dense and tactile, built through layered washes, stains, and marks that retain evidence of their making. Earthy browns, muted blues, mossy greens, and punctuations of red and gold create a palette that feels both grounded and unsettled. Gestural strokes culminating into pattern coexist with areas of quiet restraint, producing paintings that hover between cohesion and dissolution. Central to Shifting is Pinney’s depiction of women. Her figures confidently take up space, bodies exaggerated and un-contained, asserting presence through scale and gesture. This physical conviction mirrors the artist’s own evolving self-awareness - a growing insistence on defining, rather than inheriting what it means to be a woman. Working with acrylic, oil, and charcoal alongside experimental processes such as coffee staining, naturally derived inks, spray paint, and subtractive techniques, Pinney allows erasure and residue to remain visible. These material negotiations echo the exhibition’s conceptual grounding in becoming - where form emerges through accumulation, abrasion, and return. Shifting invites viewers to linger within uncertainty, to read the body as a site of connection and change, and to witness transformation as something ongoing, intimate, and quietly radical.