TOBA KHEDOORI
TOBA KHEDOORI
TOBA KHEDOORI
GEMINI G.E.L.
Toba Khedoori signing the RTP of Untitled (large branches) , 2025
TOBA KHEDOORI AT GEMINI
Branches naked of their leaves evoke winter, the season of hibernation and withdrawal from the cold, when deciduous trees (shrubs and vines) have dropped their leaves in order to conserve energy. It is also when they expose their linearity – complex and beautiful intertwinings of boughs and limbs and twigs. They are nature’s drawings, trace-marks of the plant’s growth and seeming glimpses into the mysterious and wondrous interconnectivity of the natural world. Toba Khedoori’s 2025 lithograph Untitled (large branches) isolates one such “drawing,” an entanglement of vine-like branches cropped from its natural setting. Evocations of dark, mystical woodland scenes may arise but, upon closer observation, are deflected by the artist’s acute handling of the image. All of the branch ends are neatly cut, as if excised from nature for human investigation. Typical of Khedoori’s compositions, the isolated image floats in a vast, undefinable space but, distinct from her characteristic architectural images, this tangled organic mass has been severed from its means of sustenance. The uncanniness of her unoccupied hallways and auditoriums, for example, takes a turn for the visceral given the biological (and vascular) nature of the imagery. Paradoxically, this cropping also makes it appear abstract and reminiscent of paintings and drawings by mid-20th century artists known for gestural expressionism. Khedoori’s branches, by contrast, are slowly and carefully drawn, with attention given to every node and twig, and variegations of the bark.
This precise approach characterizes her work in all mediums but, with printmaking, Khedoori has encountered additional layers of complexity (as well as new possibilities). In addition to dealing with the image’s reversal, she adapted to a new drawing surface —finely sanded limestone used in lithography—that required layered applications with a hard grease crayon to build up the different values in the image (with the darks and shadows requiring the most layers). The impressive tonal range is enhanced by the monochromatic printing in black preceded by two passes through the press: in a transparent gray (to articulate the branches, adding weight) and a transparent white (for highlights). This minimal approach offsets the gnarliness of the image and enhances its graphic quality. This is an image to be read as much as viewed.
The large scale of Khedoori’s image also required innovative thinking on the part of the artist and Gemini GEL’s master lithographer Jill Lerner. Pulling on Gemini’s impressive inventory of litho stones, they decided to use three of their largest ones for printing (44 x 30 in., 48 x 34 in. and 40 x 28 in.) and then piece together the three printed sections for the final work—a task that required close attention to registration in both the drawing and printing processes. The seaming together of images is something Khedoori does in her large-scale drawings as well; it calls attention to the constructed nature of the representation and invites closer looking and questions about process.
In printmaking, more so than with drawing or painting, the edge is a hard line defined by the stone or plate and, in most cases (as in Khedoori’s other prints, for example), it indicates the border. To achieve the floating quality of the image, Lerner had to closely monitor the position of the press’s scraper bar (which transfers ink to paper) to avoid printing a platemark. The image is printed on hand-crafted Iwano paper from Japan known for its absorbency and thus suitability for printmaking. Made of fibrous kozo (mulberry bark) and hemp, the paper has a textured surface and a warmth that accents the background in a way not unlike the waxen ground of her drawings.
From the bare branches depicted in her lithographs to the abundant blades of grass in her intaglio prints, Khedoori shifts technique with subject matter. In her etching from 2021 and mezzotints from 2024-25, close-up photographs of pampas grass served as source material for focused compositions that indulge in the linearity and flexibility of their subject.
Grass has rarely been a subject in itself in art. Albrecht Dürer’s 1503 watercolor “Great Piece of Turf” (Das große Rasenstück), as incredibly detailed as it is, was a study from nature used in the development of his paintings and engravings. For the Impressionists, expansive fields of grass simply set the scene for their plein air explorations of modern life and also allowed for loose flourishes of the brush. Khedoori yields the entire field of the picture plane to grass; there is no horizon line, creating a sense that the viewer is in the grass, surrounded by it. Through her rigorous process, she distills the blades of grass into patterns of sweeping lines, seemingly frozen, and evoking a certain quietude.
Untitled (grass) from 2021 was Khedoori’s first major etching project. Measuring more than six feet in height, it is one of the largest etchings made at Gemini from a single copper plate and the largest made using chine collé (a technique in which the image is printed on tissuethin paper before being adhered to a larger sheet). The tall and arching blades of grass convey a sense of relaxed fluidity (like a gentle breeze on a late summer day), but this is no “luncheon on the grass”. As in much of Khedoori’s work, the meaning is not in the image alone but also in its making. She uses line exclusively as means of expression, an approach well suited to etching. The consistent sharpness of the lines executed with a drypoint needle in hardground reflects Khedoori’s skill while also connoting the serrated edges characteristic of pampas grass. By choosing to print using chine collé, Khedoori—working with Gemini’s etching studio under the direction of Case Hudson—was able to grab as much ink as possible from the etched plate and thereby capture every fine line including (intentionally) the “chatter” or imperfections in the plate. Like the studio detritus (dust and hair) that collects in the backgrounds of her drawings, the chatter creates a foil to the precisionism of the linework but, because it’s printed on the same surface (ie. not layered), it advances forward, becoming one with the image. There is no distinction between ground and image, between conscious execution and happenstance.
More recently, Khedoori has explored the potential of mezzotint, which is one of the most challenging, technically demanding and at times tedious printmaking techniques. Before an image can even be created, the entire surface of the copper plate must be roughened using a tool called a rocker with a serrated edge that “bites” into the metal creating indentations where the ink will collect. For the artist, the starting point is thus a field of black and the drawing process one of removal, of scraping and/or burnishing away the pitted surface to create areas where the image will print in varying tones. (The more one removes, the lighter it will print.) The wide tonal range and velvety blacks possible with mezzotint make it a suitable technique for chiaroscuro effects as well as nocturnal scenes. The technique has become somewhat rarefied, however, since its 18th and early 19th century heyday and only a few contemporary artists (Vija Celmins, most notably) have attempted it.
Khedoori, who has devoted more time to printmaking since 2023, was up for the challenge of making mezzotints, especially given her disciplined practice as well as her recent interest in monochromatic expression and negative space. Untitled 1, Untitled 2 and Untitled 3 (from 2024 and 2025) were stepping stones in a process of learning how to pull imagery out of darkness that has given rise to Untitled (2025) which, executed with a plate measuring four by three feet, is one of the largest mezzotints ever made. At a distance what could resemble scratchy, abstract charcoal or chalkboard drawings (by Cy Twombly, for example) become shadowy blades of grass as one approaches and the eyes adjust to the darkness. As in much of Khedoori’s work there is an ambiguity that verges on the uncanny. It is not often that one experiences grass under the cover of darkness illuminated, conceivably, by moonlight. The nocturnal pastoral scenes of Samuel Palmer come to mind but, in the domain of mysteriousness, Khedoori’s images are far more enigmatic than mystical. She also sidesteps the temptation to high-contrast visual drama offered by mezzotint (as in works by John Martin, for example). Khedoori’s mezzotints are quietly alluring; they draw the viewer into their velvety blackness to be engulfed by a field of sinuous lines that bend only deeper into darkness. What one sees or experiences there is for the viewer to make out.
Khedoori’s recent prints demonstrate the artist’s ability to extract the essence of a subject to the verge of abstraction. Although still recognizable as branches or grass, the images in her lithographs and intaglio prints are curiously specific and non-specific at the same time. They hint at 20th century gestural expressionism and yet they are executed with a fastidiousness of a botanical illustrator. Printmaking with its mechanical nature and integral requirements (like plate size and registration, for example) adds additional layers of process and, based on the prints discussed here, indicates an exciting next phase in Khedoori’s ongoing exploration at the outskirts of representation.
Leslie Jones, 2025
45" (89.9 x 114.3 cm)
Untitled (large branches), 2025 3-color lithographs on 3 sheets of paper
57x 80 ⅜" (144.8 x 204.2 cm)
Untitled (grass), 2022 1 color etching with chine collé 77 ⅞ x 50 ½ " (197.8 x 128.3 cm)
(TK21-3599)
Untitled 1, 2024 1 color mezzotint with chine collé 19 ¹¹/₁₆ x 14 ⅝" (50 x 37.2 cm)
Untitled 2, 2025 1 color mezzotint 20 ⅞ x 21 ½ " (53 x 54.6 cm) Edition of 35 (TK24-3616)
Untitled 3, 2025 1 color mezzotint 20 ¾ x 21" (52.7 x 53.3 cm) Edition of 38 (projected) (TK24-3618)
Untitled, 2025 1 color mezzotint 57 ¼ x 43 ¾ " (145.4 x 111.1 cm)
Above: Megan Anderson, Jill Lerner, Toba Khedoori, Sophia Mollard, Jack Cheng in the lithography studio
Below: Oliver Dewey-Gartner, Isaac Osher, Case Hudson, Toba Khedoori in the etching studio
brochure design: John Coy printing: Colornet Press photography: Douglas M. Parker Studio: TK21-3599 Angel Xotlanihua: TK2-3617; TK23-1691
Jill Lerner: page 4 Suzanne Felsen: page 21
