David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Italian, Ethiopian-born painter Jem Perucchini (b. 1995), opening at the gallery’s Tribeca location in New York. Following recent solo presentations at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, and Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, this will be the artist’s first exhibition in the United States.
Jem Perucchini in his studio, 2026.
The exhibition takes its title from a painting on view, Sospiro (2026), which translates from Italian as “sigh.” A sigh–at once a breath, a pause, a release, a gesture–holds significance for Perucchini because of its qualities both essential and transient, audible and invisible. As the artist describes, this fleeting moment of vitality represents “the passage between the inner self and the external world, between soul and body, between what is held within and what is released.”
Perucchini’s distinctive body of work draws on a range of influences, from early Italian Renaissance painting and the patterns of African wax print textiles to ancient Greek mythology and frescoes in Ethiopian churches.