Only love will save us | Johanna Bath

Enari Gallery is proud to present Only love will save us, a solo exhibition by Johanna Bath (1980, DE) during Amsterdam Art Week 2025, opening on Thursday 22 May, between 17:00 and 21:00 during the Festive Gallery Night.

In her latest body of work, Johanna Bath shifts the focus from the ephemerality of memory and nostalgia towards a more tangible, corporeal mode of remembering. While the sense of transience remains present, her new paintings place greater emphasis on the physical dimension of memory—where touch, tension, and proximity play a pivotal role.

Bath explores how memories are also experienced through the senses, turning her attention to the female body and capturing intimate fragments. These cropped scenes and close-ups feel like brief flashes—glimpses of a larger narrative. Through her signature compositions, she invites the viewer to pause over subtle details that quietly take on emotional resonance. The texture of skin, the touch of fabric against the body, that singular moment between movement and stillness—it is these elements that define her visual language.

Informed by personal experience and a critical reflection on how female bodies have been depicted throughout art history, Bath offers an alternative to the traditional male gaze. Rather than emphasizing eroticism or objectification, she renders images of intimacy and attraction with nuance, care, and agency. Her work reveals a balance between tenderness and strength, between presence and suggestion—where the female gaze serves as both subject and perspective.

With quiet contemplation, Bath welcomes the viewer into a world where sensuality is approached with reverence. Her paintings reveal a form of beauty nestled in subtle gestures, where memory becomes something deeply personal and embodied.

The exhibition is on view from 22 May through 29 June at Enari Gallery, Utrechtsestraat 44, Amsterdam.