Nature Morte is pleased to present a solo show of new works by Srishti Rana Menon, The Heart of the Matter. The works on view are both paintings on canvas and watercolors on paper. Menon studied textile design at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad and worked in the field for many years, collaborating with some of India’s best known fashion designers. Her road to the Fine Arts was intuitive and methodical, allowing the materials and their properties to guide her towards a style and imagery. Her works are rigorously abstract, defiant in their limited parameters, uncorrupted by fashions or politics.

The paintings start with a central focus from which layered forms breathe out of. Classical and controlled, they juxtapose simple shapes in precise colors on white fields which become energized, straining to contain pigments which seem to pulsate. The watercolors on paper allow the artist additional freedom, spontaneity and serendipity being integral to their creation. With all of the works, delicacy and a stoic rigidity are juxtaposed, discipline allows for laxity. The artist’s vocabulary is closely connected to the seasonal fluctuations of temperature and humidity, as her pigments behave differently under various conditions, enabling a wider range of expressions.

Srishti Rana Menon (b.1979) graduated in Textile Design from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. She further went on to study at Winchester School of Art, UK. Srishti’s work is a reflection of her concern that spans two sides of her creative endeavor, with an intermixing of both textile design and its constituent media as well as the freedom of expression that emerges in her art practice. With a slow and mindful process exploring concepts of containment, control, release and flow, Srishti’s work is heavily dependent on the weather conditions, and her practice changes in agency with the weather. While her summer works are done on canvas, she explores paper as a medium during the colder winter months.

Srishti is a recipient of the Charles Wallace India Trust (2004) as well as a Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council residency (2011). Her first solo show was held in Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Center (2017) and she has exhibited in various solo and group shows since then in Latitude 28 (2022), Terrain Offline (2021), Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (2011). Her work is in various private collections in India and abroad. The artist lives and works in Gurugram.