Nature Morte is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Tauseef Khan.

The title of the exhibition, “Polygonal Tessellations,” refers to the artist’s subject matter: the geometrical patterning found in hyper-decorated mosques throughout the Islamic World. To tessellate refers to creating a mosaic pattern from a variety of shapes. Khan further abstracts these colorful patterns by viewing them through a scrim of shaped drinking glasses, distorting and softening them, as if seen through a cloud of memory or in a hallucinatory haze. His subject is both personal and political, as if he is questioning his own cultural inheritance, his relationship to traditions that are both seductive and complicated. Khan transposes the rigidity of architecture into the liquidity of painting, questioning the mechanics of vision itself. He synthesizes diverse schools of painting (Orientalism, Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Photo-Realism, Pattern & Decoration) into succinct tableaux which are unapologetically sumptuous.

The artist has written about his works:

My paintings are about how we view history through the prism of today, how it is constantly shifting and changing according to our contemporary perspectives. The wine glasses are a metaphor for society, how the people we know and come in contact with affect how we perceive the world and our past. I was born and raised in Delhi, so the Moghul Monuments of Delhi have always symbolized the official past, yet they also have personal memories for me, growing up and visiting them with family and friends. In front of them I create a screen of glassware, which abstracts the image of the monument, turning it into a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes. On a formal level, I am interested in contrasting the solidity and antiquity of the stone monument with the transparency and delicacy of the glassware, and the challenges this presents to me as a painter. I am inspired by the masterworks of Dutch Still Life painting, with the amazing tables full of precious objects, fruit and flowers, which the painters rendered with photographic precision. I work to achieve the same sort of hyper-realism in my works, so that the painting is at once very real but also something illusionary.

Tauseef Khan continues to live and work in New Delhi, where he was born in 1980. He holds a BFA in Painting from the Karnataka Open University in Mysore and a MFA in Drawing and Painting from the Jiwaji University, Gwalior. He has also studied at Triveni Kala Sangam and the National Museum in New Delhi. Previous solo exhibitions of his works have been held at Nature Morte at the Oberoi Gurgaon (2013), Art & Soul, Mumbai (2015) and Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi (2018).