THE SKY WAS NEVER MEANT TO HOLD US

The sky bends, breathes, blinks and it is never fixed, never final. Under its vast umbrella, two artists converge at Galerie Sara Lily Perez, each one threading the immaterial with the material, each one asking: What happens when perception is pushed to its breaking point?

The Sky Was Never Meant to Hold Us pairs Christiane Grimm and John Vitale in a duet of light and form, of rhythm and reflection. This show isn’t something you simply look at. It’s something you fall into.

Although Grimm is trained in architecture, she dreams in color, composing with glass and glows of light. Her boxes, those radiant portals, shimmer with milky refractions, soft

pastels and deep hues refracted through ribbed glass, subtly shifting as you move. There’s no stillness here, only motion. Light enters, transforms, and escapes. She lets space and color breathe and speak. The dialogue is dreamy, yet exact, like a distant memory you cannot quite grasp.

Vitale, making his Berlin debut, counters Grimm with texture and time. His paintings are layered archives of scraps, smudges, house paint, oil sticks, and pencil lines that dance and pause. There’s rhythm here, but it’s unruly, almost musical. He moves slowly, only weeks at a time, letting intuition steer his course. His canvases aren’t explanations. They’re revelations, vulnerable and visceral. They hold chaos, coaxing it into clarity.

As Vitale explains: "My work is an ongoing investigation of the human experience, an attempt to deconstruct and make sense of the chaos that permeates everyday life. Painting is both a method of compartmentalization and expansion, a means of breaking apart experiences while simultaneously creating something entirely new. At its core, my work is about movement and rhythm, a process of trust in the unknown, where the smallest decision can open up an entirely new path forward."​

Vitale's richly layered paintings invite us to engage closely, offering a sense of rhythm and motion that unfolds through gestures, colors, and structures.

Together, their work beckons us to dissolve the ground we walk on. Up becomes down. Gravity becomes optional, and our eyes adjust. The sky, you‘ll realize, was never meant to hold or limit us.

To learn more or enquire about the avaialbility of these works, visit our website here.

Galerie Sara Lily Perez Team