OSL contemporary is pleased to present the exhibition 'Nagori', with new works by Emily Gernild.
Exhibition text written by Alice Ongaro Sartori
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NAGORI
Let’s start with a book.
Writer Ryoko Sekiguchi tells us that there is a word for that sensation we feel when we know a fruit, a harvest of the earth, is nearing the end of its seasonality. It’s the final taste. The flavour changes, the scent grows denser. It’s a physical perception, but also an emotional one: we know that soon that fruit will no longer be on our tables. We will miss its taste and the ability to possess it, and it will miss us in return—mutually. The season comes to a close, and something within us prepares to make room for its departure. "Nagori. La nostalgie de la saison qui vient de nous quitter" (P.O.L., 2018) by Sekiguchi is not only a book, it is a sensory and emotional adventure through the millenary history of the relationship between human beings, the Earth, and its fruits.
'Nagori' is also the title of the exhibition by artist Emily Gernild, which presents a series of paintings on canvas imbued with the sensory and symbolic experience of contact with the most extraordinary and mysterious fruits of the earth: citrus. In the work that gives the exhibition its name, a large bright yellow citrus fruit—perhaps a pomelo, genealogical ancestor of the citrus family—is depicted on a wide plate. The bold lines and swirling brushstrokes do not merely describe the fruit but evoke a deep sense of metamorphosis and time. The paint, dense and sinuous, impresses the materiality of change onto the canvas: the fruit seems to become a symbol of a uterine gestation of time itself.
Citrus fruits become true talismans for other emotional worlds. In 'Citrus Portal 1' and 'Citrus Portal 2', both horizontal in format, the shape of the citrus fruit recalls that of an eye: a gaze that travels across different layers of reality. In 'Lemon Salicifolia', the focus shifts to the verticality of the tree and the uniqueness of this variety, known for its slender leaves that resemble those of a willow. With 'Delights of the Garden', the still life becomes increasingly rich and elaborate; in 'The Land of the Lemon Gold', it opens to new earthly delights: flowers, roses, petals, spores, roots. 'Wild Rose' and 'Thorns' offer close-up views of the rose, from the folds of its petals to the pointed architecture of its thorns. Finally, 'Compost Poetry' speaks to the cyclical life of the earth, while 'Silver Moon' lifts our gaze upward into the night sky, when the earth sleeps.
In the town of Palmera, between Valencia and Alicante, in it lies the largest open-air citrus collection in the world, or possibly so. With over 500 varieties of citrus, from ancient grafts to new experimental hybrids, this rare garden of citrus biodiversity (Todolì Citrus Fundaciò) was created with an educational mission, within the citric world that only appears familiar but is, in truth, boundless. Vicente Todolí, its founder, was inspired by the Florentine figure of Cosimo de’ Medici, who in 1550 sublimated his love for citrus into a collection as precious as any work of art. Emily Gernild visited the citrus collection in Palmera on three occasions—twice in 2024 and once in 2025—and it was, for her, a revelatory experience: a perfect portal, in tune with her already evident interest in the subject—just think of her 'Black Lemons' exhibition at Schwarz Contemporary in Berlin in 2021. For Emily Gernild the strongest sensation was always the same, living in that garden of earthly delights: the most important one, the extraordinary epiphany in which all the senses awaken at once.
Emily Gernild leaves a visual imprint of the sensory experience of approaching the citric world, in all its complex whirl of sensations and melancholies. Nagori, in Japanese, literally means “trace,” and in relation to seasonality it expresses that taste which will never return. This is what can be found in Gernild’s 'Nagori': represented through vivid colours and granitic shadows—traces of the ecstasy of nature perceived through the senses, the mesmerizing gratuity of time, the mysterious elegance of seasonality as it exits the stage, leaving behind a vast void that transforms into a welcoming space for the new.
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15.05.2025
Alice Ongaro Sartori
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Alice Ongaro Sartori is a researcher, writer and curator in visual culture and publishing, with a focus on ecology and the public sphere. She is currently a Library Research Grant Recipient at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. She is part of wetlands, a publishing house dedicated to social justice and environmental sustainability based in Venice. She is also a Guest Editor for the Brazilian publishing house Editora Âyiné. She was Head of Public Programs at Ocean Space / TBA21–Academy in Venice and she was awarded a Curatorial Fellowship at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection (2018).
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Emily Gernild is a painter based in Copenhagen. She received her formal training at the Funen Art Academy and the Düsseldorf Art Academy, earning an MA in 2016. Gernild’s practice is characterised by assertive, textured, and chromatically rich paintings that engage with motifs drawn from dream imagery, idiomatic expressions, and conventions of historical still life. Her work interrogates and expands upon these sources, seeking to extract new meaning from established visual tropes. Applying both oil paint and rabbit-skin glue mixed with pigment, Gernild explores the dynamic interplay between figure and ground, utilising these materials to investigate different approaches to painting.
Gernild has presented several solo exhibitions including 'Emily Gernild // Sonja Ferlov Mancoba' at the Vigeland Museum, Norway (2025); 'Beyond Ideas' at Studio 4 Berlin, Germany (2024); and 'Aunts and Dolls' at Gl. Holtegaard, Denmark (2023). Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions such as 'Koloristerne' at Den Frie, Denmark (2025); 'Kolossal' at Kastrupgårdsamlingen, Denmark (2024); 'Flowers in Art' at Arken Museum for Modern Art, Denmark (2021); 'Leftovers and Other Squeezed Lemons' at Gammelgaard Art and Culture, Denmark (2021); and 'After Images' at Janus Vestjyllands Kunstmuseum, Denmark (2021). Her paintings are held in prominent public collections, including the Canica Art Collection (Norway), the Danish Arts Foundation (Statens Kunstfond), Trapholt Museum of Modern Art (Denmark), and Kastrupgårdsamlingen (Denmark). Gernild has also completed public art commissions for the Ministry of Higher Education and Science (Denmark), the Maritime and Commercial High Court (Denmark), Holbæk Art (Denmark).
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