STILL POINT
New Works by Sheila Ghidini
date. August 23 thru September 23
opening: Saturday, August 27, from 3 to 5
STILL POINT
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered, Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot
Pastine Projects is pleased to present Still Point, a new series of drawings and sculptures by Sheila Ghidini. This body of work marks a quiet yet decisive evolution in Ghidini’s practice—extending her long-standing engagement with negative space into a more nuanced meditation on the tensions between movement and stillness, control and chance.
Ghidini’s work has long been shaped by her fascination with structure and the geometry of architecture. Her early practice focused on disassembling and reconstructing common chairs, a process that allowed her to explore new perspectives—particularly the interplay of void and form.
In Still Point, she draws on the formal purity of elemental shapes—squares and circles—to construct compositions that balance precision with unpredictability. These opposing forces generate a deliberate tension, one that Ghidini embraces as both a visual strategy and a reflection of the paradoxes embedded in everyday experience.
Still Point Series, detail
Sheila Ghidini's work encompasses drawing, sculpture, installation, and site specific public art. She is a 2025 recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Grant and has been shown and collected in private and public collections including the Achenbach Collection of Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Runneymede Sculpture Farm in Woodside, CA, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She attended Hartford Art School, University of Hartford and did graduate work at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. She completed an M.F.A. in sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving the Sylvan and Pam Coleman Memorial Fellowship. She was an artist-in residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts and The American Academy in Rome Summer program. She has received grants from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, the Krasner-Pollack Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Marcelle Labaudt Memorial Fund, Rockefeller Foundation and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Sheila has completed a number of public art projects in the Bay Area and beyond. She presently resides in San Francisco and has taught art throughout the Bay Area, including University of California, Berkeley, California College of Arts, San Francisco State University and University of California Extensions. Ghidini is represented by Pastine Projects in San Francisco, CA.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Still Point
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered, Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
T.S. Eliot
Four Quartets
Structure and the geometry of architecture have always been a focus (2010-2025) in my work. Through dismantling and rebuilding common chairs, I’ve examined different ways of seeing negative space and exploring structure. Along with this, I’ve been working with the play of real and imagined forms by combining drawn cast shadows and negative spaces in three-dimensional assemblages. This process grows out of years of observational representational drawing and a focus on examining the relationships of objects in space. “Things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another” is an example of one of my wall assemblages in which I’ve reconfigured a found wood chair and added drawn cast shadows and negative spaces on the wall.
My work has shifted from an external focus to a more internal one after a serious health issue affected my vision earlier this year. This new series of drawings focus more deeply on vision, perception, space and circularity as a structure. I have continued to explore the space around shapes and forms with an intent of integrating into a whole image multiple layers of time.
Over the years, a throughline within the work is an interest in establishing dialectics, conceptually and formally. In this new series I’ve continued with the principles of negative space and positive space, stasis and movement, control and chance, and the formal elemental shapes of squares and circles. These opposing notions and qualities create a tension within the work that I actively pursue as a means of expressive visual representation and as a reflection of lived experience.