Only love will save us: Johanna Bath

Enari Gallery is proud to present Only love will save us, a solo exhibition by Johanna Bath. In her latest body of work, Bath shifts focus from the fleeting nature of memory and nostalgia to a more grounded, tactile exploration of remembrance. While the sense of transience still remains, her new paintings place greater emphasis on the physical aspects of memory, where touch, tension, and closeness come into play.

Bath explores the sensory dimension of recollection through a concentrated focus on the female form, presenting cropped scenes and close-up compositions that resemble brief glimpses, suggesting fragments of a larger, unspoken story. Her distinctive compositional style draws viewers into these quiet moments, allowing subtle details to hold emotional significance. The texture of skin, the sensation of fabric against the body, the quiet pause between motion and stillness, these elements shape her visual language.

Drawing on personal experience as well as a thoughtful reflection on how women’s bodies have historically been portrayed in art, Bath offers a different perspective from the traditional male gaze. Rather than emphasizing overt eroticism or objectification, she presents images of intimacy and allure through a lens of subtlety, agency, and care. Her work highlights the balance between softness and strength, presence and suggestion, centering the female gaze both as subject and viewpoint.

With a sense of quiet focus, Bath invites viewers into a space where sensuality is approached with intention and nuance. Her paintings offer a vision of beauty rooted in understatement, where emotional depth is found in small gestures, and memory is experienced as something personal and physical.