Emma Obrietan - Easy Preservation

A landscape was shred
Molly Rose Lieberman

A landscape shredded
Molly Rose Lieberman

Artist’s Relief
Emma Obrietan

Dear Beast
Carole Gibbons

Muses
Carole Gibbons

Galerie Mirages
Group Exhibition

To M.
Miriam Stoney,
Miriam Yammad

Dreams of the everyday
Andrew Cranston,
Winifred Nicholson

Pegasus
Carole Gibbons

Self-Portrait
Miriam Yammad

Not Quite Good Enough to be on TV Harmonies
Joanne Robertson

Haven
Group Exhibition
(White Columns Online)

Free The Innovator
Theo Christy

Personicx
Theo Christy

The September Issue
Bruno Zhu

Andrew Cranston

Carole Gibbons

Emma Obrietan
Easy Preservation

15-30 May, 2026
Opening reception: Thursday, 14 May, 5–8 pm
The Shop, Sadie Coles HQ, 62 Kinglsy Street, London

Emma Obrietan’s works on canvas exemplify what art historian and curator Paul Pieorni has termed a “governing irrealism within realist art.” Though ostensibly photorealistic, each canvas belies resolution, appearing “as something warped, torqued, and anamorphically displaced.”¹

The exhibition’s title, ‘Easy Preservation’ is drawn from the press communication for ‘Stop Painting’, an exhibition held at Fondazione Prada, Venice in 2021. The phrase refers at once to the critique of painting as a commodity – one of five ruptures in the history of painting identified by its curator, artist Peter Fischli – while acknowledging art’s capacity to function as cultural record or artefact.

Obrietan’s sources are typically vernacular, user-generated images, each researched, re-skilled and charged by the artist in a process of distortion which Pieroni argues “ultimately corresponds to a contemporary world whose own systems and structures have been stressed and bent out of shape.”²

While screen and lens-based media are central to this destabilization, Obrietan’s approach remains decidedly painterly, speaking above all to a reverence for craft and humanity.

1 Pieroni, P. 2026. Artist’s Relief. [Exhibition text]. 5b, Glasgow, 31 January – 21 March, 2026.
2 Ibid.

Works List (PDF)

Emma Obrietan (b.1999, Seattle, USA) lives and works in Hamburg. She graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in 2025.

Emma Obrietan
Gardena Boulevard, Post Office, 2026
Oil on canvas
95 × 170 cm

Emma Obrietan
Gardena Boulevard, Post Office, 2026 (detail)

Emma Obrietan
A Life Well Lived, 2026
Oil on canvas
120 × 120 cm

Emma Obrietan
A Life Well Lived, 2026 (detail)

Colophon

5b
Studio 0/1
43 Virginia Street
Glasgow
G1 1TS