Nature Morte is pleased to present "The Dichotomous Salon" a new body of work on paper by the painter Nidhi Agarwal. These are large works, the largest measuring more than 10 feet in length. The works are both collages of found and recycled materials and drawings, many of which are singular portraits of heads which are reminiscent of the work of FN Souza.

The artist has this to say on the works:

“Even the tiniest shred of paper, cloth or a string lost to the wind or trash is a loss for me. So I collect them carefully from the entire mess that happens in my studio every day. These bits of paper add so much meaning to my creative life that I keep them as a valuable currency. A formless form is taken as a new Pictionary game that has the energy to mesmerise me with endless ideas.

A plethora of discarded books, notebooks, novels, comics, and magazines act as starters to vague things one can build. A piece of torn paper with text with incomplete sentences, just a few words here and there, can make no sense. For me this little one can ignite my senses.

These collage/drawings are extensively engaging by all means. Waste material glued haphazardly in multiple layers builds a play zone for my large portrait drawings. These large portraits emerge as profiles of individuals shaped by their inherent traits. Dichotomy prevails in every group, clan or tribe. This dichotomy shapes our social landscape. At the same time it also proves to be a delicate pallet of war zones. The masses must adapt to the coexistence of harmony and conflict. Human personalities are built with millions of factors ranging from genes, family dynamics, geographic and cultural influences, professional choices, gender and so on. The human race is the craziest league.

The symposium of mercurial logicians is the theatre of philosophers who appeared to be homogenous but later they ended up with a frantic contradiction due to their respective eccentricities.”

Nidhi Agarwal (b. 1972) is a graduate of the College of Arts, Delhi, where she continues to live and work. Agarwal’s solo exhibitions have been presented by Nature Morte, New Delhi; Artist Center Gallery, Mumbai; and Dhoomimal Gallery, New Delhi. Her works have also been exhibited at institutions such as Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, Greece; Penza Museum, Penza, Russia; and the Indira Gandhi National Center for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi, India. She has been felicitated with the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant 2016–2017, New York, USA, and has undertaken residencies such as the Art PARTage Residency and Workshop, Triangle Network, Mauritius in 2019, and the DrawInternational Residency, Caylus, France in 2018.