Alterations Activation Abstraction by Sundaram Tagore Gallery

ALTERATIONS ACTIVATION ABSTRACTION

ALTERATIONS ACTIVATION ABSTRACTION SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERY NEW YORK FEBRUARY 28 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; MARCH 30, 2019

GALLERY MISSION Sundaram Tagore Gallery is devoted to examining the exchange of ideas between Western and non-Western cultures. With spaces in Hong Kong, Singapore and New York City (in Chelsea and on Madison Avenue), the gallery was the first to focus exclusively on the rise of globalization in contemporary art. The gallery represents painters, sculptors and photographers from around the world. They each work in different mediums and use diverse techniques, but share a passion for cross-cultural dialogue. The gallery is renowned for its support of cultural activitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;including poetry readings, book launches, music performances and film screeningsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that further its mission of East-West exchange.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This exhibition could not have been possible without the collaboration of my friend and long-time colleague, Sundaram Tagore. Sundaram immediately understood my vision, and has supported Alterations Activation Abstraction from its inception. My gratitude goes to him and his superb staff. They have been essential in bringing this exhibition to fruition. I am particularly indebted to all the artists and gallerists who have generously made the works in this exhibition available. Thanks to all for welcoming our requests. Particular thanks go to Carrie Seid for her insights about process-driven art. And finally, my loving appreciation goes to Richard Seid, my in-house editor, for his willingness to expertly read every word I write before it goes public. â&#x20AC;&#x201C;Betty Seid, Chicago, February 2019

CURATOR’S FOREWORD Abstraction is not new to India. Neither is a hands-on tradition of Abstraction has not been the focus of previous group shows of making things. This exhibition is about where those two forces meet. twenty-first-century artists who either live in the sub-continent (India and Pakistan) or have an attachment to it. Historically, devotional The artists’ works in this exhibition derive from the manipulation objects (particularly for Tantric practices) have sought to visually or alteration of existing forms—text, photography and digital represent manifestations of abstract cosmological origin. Sohan reproduction among others. They are primarily process-driven, Qadri’s sumptuous works on paper are a contemporary expression without figurative pictorial drama but nonetheless full of weighty, of that tradition (see p. 52). Mid-twentieth-century painting in India revelatory depth, not to mention aesthetic appeal. Most are responded to the AbEx call from the West. But that’s not what the structurally simple at first glance, but with close inspection abstract works in this exhibition are about. Abstraction is different reveal logical inventive geometries. In all, the hand of the artist is now. Rather these artists have sought meaning through process immediately evident in each work on display. (see Shaurya Kumar, p. 32 or Tanya Gill, p. 16); or conversely, have found meaning through materials-based practices (see Idris Khan, My vision for this exhibition began brewing after I curated New p. 24 or Neha Vedpathak, p. 64). Narratives: Contemporary Art from India (2007) in which engaging stories were told within the idiom of recognizable figurative forms. Manisha Parekh bemoaned that she had to call her work abstract, But what, I wondered, if the content of a work was not so immediately because—she said—there was no better word in the English language recognizable? Could form itself provide a narrative—or at least the to identify it (see p. 40). Perhaps the word she sought was haptic, once-upon-a-time of one? To answer that rhetorical question, I which, according to Webster’s, means “of or relating to the sense sought artists who have chosen the language of Abstraction (via of touch, in particular relating to the perception and manipulation altered forms) to place their work within a less familiar lineage of of objects using the senses of touch and proprioception.” A haptic narrative art making. All are artists who have let materials lead them. practice is the uniting curatorial factor in this exhibition of abstract art. Processes of alteration put their chosen media to new purposes. Narratives are revealed without the weighty presence of figuration. –Betty Seid, Chicago, February 2019

SIMRYN GILL likely the material at hand—that provide a geometric grid for the organic eggs. An obvious historic antecedent is the work of Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), the Dada artist known for his collages, elegantly composed from discarded paper and almost always including text. Like Schwitters, Gill’s juxtapositions of elements Gill’s initial desire to use an imperfect method (tearing) as a means invite viewer interpretation. to achieve perfection summons the idea of the Japanese Zen enso, the single-stroke, brush-painted circle that traditional Zen Simryn Gill has exhibited around the world, including at Arthur M. calligraphers seek to master. Their concentrated effort may aim to Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.; Tate Modern, create perfection, but it also recognizes that an imperfect result—an London; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; and egg rather than a circle, perhaps—can be accepted as its own kind the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. She is represented in prestigious collections internationally, including the Museum of of perfection. Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Circles have figured prominently in Gill’s work. In her 2013 Venice Los Angeles County Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum of Biennale entry, Here Art Grows on Trees, O shapes repeat in various Art, California; Tate Modern, London; and National Gallery Singapore. installations, particularly Naught, a collection of found objects in the In 2013, Gill represented Australia in the 55th Venice Biennale. Simryn Gill’s Untitled (egg drawings) did not start out to be eggs. “The egg drawings started life as exercises in perfection, since the objective was to tear faultless circles. This proved to be impossible, and the results invariably tended towards the ovoid...”1

shape of zeros that hung from nails and strings on a wall. Born in Singapore, 1959 | Lives and works in Sydney, Australia, Gill is an ardent collector of the castoff materials that fill her and Port Dickson, Malaysia environment—the O trinkets in Naught, also wrappers, scraps of ________ paper, pages of text, etc.—much of which finds its way into her work. 1 “Simryn Gill: egg drawing No. 14, 2014-2016.” Paddle8. https://paddle8.com/work/simryn-gill/129660-egg-drawingThe materials enliven her creativity, just as her creativity enlivens no14. (accessed 30 October 2018) them. These odd bits of paper are torn to form the eggs of her egg drawings. Gill’s ovoids are then pasted onto ledger pages—most

UNTITLED (EGG DRAWING)

2017, collage, pencil and ink on paper, 12.5 x 33.4 inches/31.8 x 84.8 cm, one of tripych Courtesy of Tracy Williams Ltd, New York 11

UNTITLED (EGG DRAWING)

2017, collage, pencil and ink on paper, 12.5 x 33.4 inches/31.8 x 84.8 cm, two of triptych Courtesy of Tracy Williams Ltd, New York 12

UNTITLED (EGG DRAWING)

2016-2017, collage, pencil and ink on paper, 12.5 x 33.4 inches/31.8 x 84.8 cm, three of triptych Courtesy of Tracy Williams Ltd, New York 13

UNTITLED (EGG DRAWING) UNTITLED (EGG DRAWING) (detail), two of triptych, Courtesy Williams York 2017, collage, pencil and inkof onTracy paper, 12.5 x Ltd, 33.4New inches/31.8 x 84.8 cm 14

TANYA GILL Tanya Gill says she “married into India,”1 and thus lives between geographies and cultures—Chandigarh (her husband’s family home) and Chicago. Seeking personal unity in adapting to her “living in the in-between” is analogous to Gill’s art making practice; she meticulously joins different surfaces to create a unified plane in her rafoo (darned) constructions.

allows threads of warp and weft to be pulled free to produce a delicate irregular fringe. The house-shape is created with a different color thread darned into the cloth to fill a corresponding hole cut by the artist. At the same time, it becomes inseparable from the fabric ground. Gill has said, “It is my compulsion to mimic bringing parts together to make a whole, to unify.”2 Her technique is analogous to the human ability to assimilate and remain individual, to adapt and Gill’s forms begin with a journey. Although she was already living remain whole. between India and the United States, it wasn’t until she was granted a Nehru-Fulbright fellowship and lived in New Delhi for a Tanya Gill has been a Nehru-Fulbright fellow, an artist-in-residence year (2012-2013), that her art fundamentally shifted focus to self- at Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, and a fellow at MacDowell observation—adjusting to and merging with her new environment. Artists Colony, New Hampshire. Her work has been exhibited for The journey continues. On long family drives between New Delhi more than twenty years, both in America and abroad, including at and Chandigarh on the historic Grand Trunk Road, Gill passes the the Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh, India. time sketching. A particular architectural form has captured her attention: the barsati, a rooftop room or small terrace apartment Born in Fort Dix, New Jersey, 1970 | Lives and works in Chandigarh, built to accommodate expanding family needs (a more elemental India, and Chicago version of what in the US is called a mother-in-law apartment). The ________ various shapes of this simple structure metaphorically represent the 1 Gill, Tanya. “Living Between.” Eye on India. http://eyeonindia. adaptation that Gill seeks. They translate visually to pure geometric org/blog/living-between/ (accessed 30 October 2018). form in Altered, a series created in collaboration with rafoogars 2 Ibid. (professional darners) in India. In the Altered series, thread is darned into pieces of repurposed cloth (a canopy that had once covered a shrine during a festival, which Gill found at a local market in Delhi). The unfinished cut edge

ALTERED SERIES

2013-2018, thread darned into found cloth, various sizes 17

ALTERED SERIES (details) 18

REENA KALLAT although that is the Sanskrit definition of Saris. They were left behind along with recipes and the ephemeral mementos that accompanied them—the touch of silk, the scent of her mother, the taste of gulab jamun—that the young artist embedded in her own memory. It was sensory engagement with her lost mother’s belongings that kept her mother present. Walls of the Womb continues that practice In Kallat’s Walls of the Womb, crimson scrolls that take the form with this abstract portrait. of saris drape deep red walls. They visually embrace the viewer who walks into the installation. The scrolls have been tie-dyed to Reena Kallat has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New preserve a pattern of pure white dots after the silk has been bathed York; Tate Modern and Saatchi Gallery, London; Mori Art Museum, in pigment. Once untied, the puckered bandhani (from the Sanskrit Tokyo; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai. Her works verb bandh, to bind) remain slightly raised to create a seemingly are in numerous permanent collections, including the Art Gallery random pattern that is hardly random at all. Rather, the pattern of New South Wales, Sydney; National Taiwan Museum of Fine of dots, created with the same precise technique by artisans of Arts, Taichung; National Gallery of Modern Art and the Kiran Nadar Bhuj (in India’s Kutch desert), is Braille. It is a translation of Kallat’s Museum of Art, New Delhi. Although much of Reena Kallat’s art employs text, in Walls of the Womb, legibility is not essential. It is the presence of the words, abstracted by having been translated into Braille, that is key. She has said, “I’m interested in thinking of the thing I make as language itself—where meaning is lodged in the material.”1

mother’s hand-written recipe book (on display in a nearby vitrine). Born in New Delhi, 1973 | Lives and works in Mumbai ________ 1 Kallat, Reena, as told to Soin, Himali Singh. “Reena Saini Kallat Discusses Her Exhibition at Nature Morte in New Delhi.” But reading is not what this very personal piece is about. Kallat 21 December 2015. http://www.artforum.com/interviews/ calls it an “after presence, where images, taste, touch, sounds and 2 reena-saini-kallat-discusses-her-exhibition-at-nature-morte-insmells have an after-life.” The inscrutable (to most of us) text is new-delhi-56896. (accessed 30 October 2018) secondary to the experience of the memory of Kallat’s mother who died of cancer when the artist was eight years old. The obvious 2 Kallat Reena, interviewed by Veeranganakumari, Solanki. “Beyond Delicious: Talking About Food.” 13 July 2018. http:// inseparable associations of nature (the womb itself) and nurture writeartconnect.com/beyond-delicious-talking-about-food. (recipes for food) make this a specifically feminine work. Further, (accessed 30 October 2018) these scrolls are fashioned to be saris, not just strips of cloth, In concept, a blind person running sensitive fingers over the nowtextured textile could read it.

WALLS OF THE WOMB

2007, tie-dyed silk and hand written recipe book, installation at Arken Museum in Denmark Courtesy of Nature Morte, New Delhi, photo by Anders Sune Berg 21

WALLS OF THE WOMB (detail) 22

IDRIS KHAN Although it may appear that the hand of the artist is missing from words. Stamping and layering in bursts of energy were therapeutic, Idris Khan’s densely layered images, his vision of what a picture should be is not absent. The photographic documentary “moment” has never been his goal. Khan pushes photographic processes, using photomechanical reproduction and scanning (no negatives, thus nothing permanent), to become something else.1 His aim is to collapse time, to unite a series, even an eternity, of moments into a single image. He has said the repetitive putting down of layer upon layer of imagery is like a meditation. And, is not meditation a means to recognize that a moment might be an eternity?

like the repetitive chanting of a mantra. Without advance knowledge it is almost impossible to decipher the process that produced these elegant monochromatic prints. Traces of original writing remain as pure abstraction. Khan uses digital reproduction as a painter might use a brush and a rag to create a soft smudged surface. The resulting flattened space holds the visual layers of his sorrow.

Idris Khan has exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Britain and Saatchi Gallery, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Khan’s earliest photographic work explored a poetic relationship California; and Baibakov Art Projects, Moscow. His work is in the to making marks. Mechanical processes were his sole tools when permanent collections of the Saatchi Collection and the British he copied every page of the Qu’ran. In doing so he experienced Museum, London; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the physical rhythm of turning every page—itself a kind of trance- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; and Centre inducing meditation—to produce the whole volume in one weighty Georges Pompidou, Paris. image. No longer legible, it nonetheless represented the essence of the revered Book. Born in Birmingham, England, 1978 | Lives and works in London The Church Walk series was born of the need to expiate grief. Within a short period, Khan’s mother died and his wife, artist Annie Morris, had a stillborn child. The artist’s studio became his emotional refuge. Morris suggested that Khan move on from using appropriated works in favor of using his own hand.2 He does so in the Church Walk prints. Each day upon arrival at his studio, Khan wrote about what he was feeling, then made a rubber stamp of his

________ 1 Khan, Idris. “Conversations with Contemporary Artists.” (Guggenheim Museum, New York. 28 April 2010) https://youtube. com/watch?v=QdTuPoaYtQE (accessed 30 October 2018) 2 Siganporia, Shahnaz. “Idris Khan and Annie Morris talk about love, art, and coping with grief.” (21 April 2018) https://www. vogue.in/content/idris-khan-and-annie-morris-talk-about-loveart-and-coping-with-grief (accessed 30 October 2018).

CHURCH WALK STUDIO 9