This, the Sublime, and its Double

Nature Morte
Highline Nine Galleries
Gallery 5
507 West 27th Street
New York, NY 10001

“I want the eye to rest on nothing.” – Tanya Goel

Nature Morte of New Delhi is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new paintings by Tanya Goel, the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York.

Abstraction of form, introspective white spaces and projections in colour reflect back at the viewer in artist Tanya Goel’s latest body of work, “This, the Sublime and its Double”, in her New York solo with Nature Morte, New Delhi.

The phenomenon of absorbing and reflecting light has been central to Tanya’s work for a good number of years. In her simple and exacting words, “light is sight; sight is colour”. Whilst incorporating this into her creative process, Tanya’s evolution as an artist has also involved pondering over “what truly is art” within the concept of “the universe”, which in itself, is an abstraction. Consequently, her latest work also subtly explores the self from a lens that is not only turned inward, but also orbits our different states of being. The fluidity of the self and the environment that contains us, can in this way, be likened to the human perception of colour.

Tanya feels it is this latest body of work that has brought her closest to an answer befitting her artistic journey, following nearly 15 years of ‘collecting’ scattered experiences, introspecting on a deep personal level, and connecting the dots. For her, art is the rendering of “intense periods of focus” that manifest facets of the conscious and unconscious mind.

Interestingly, the creative environments that shaped each of her three monumental works (currently on display) shifted unconsciously much like changing seasons. Mechanisms 1 is the product of long stretches spent in sharp day light, with a fiery palette and negative spaces that mimic blinding shards of light. The work embodies the ability to contain light, reminiscent of a hot summer’s day. It effuses a frenetic energy, with the blood red of poppy flowers pulsating across the canvas.

Mechanisms 2, in sharp contrast, is a product of the night. Cool, dark and pensive, a creation that strives to capture the duality of a softly illuminating moon, against the clinical aura cast by tungsten light. This particular work encapsulates the lingering of a past that is both deliberately detached and wistfully ethereal. There is a semblance of earthiness that is reminiscent of withering leaves in the fall and barren branches seeking a grey sky.

The majority of time Tanya spent on Mechanisms 3 was during the golden hours of dawn, describing her state of mind, at the time, as tranquil and intuitive. The resulting canvass is complex yet subtle, with soothing harmony in the methodical and repeating layers of fine lines, shapes and a seamlessly merging palette of calm.

Transitioning like the artist from Mechanisms 1 to 3, one begins to grasp the allusion to sublimity in her show title, and the dichotomy these works capture between light and darkness; upheaval and peace.

Tanya Goel’s works are notable for their exploration of a rigorous abstraction that is deeply invested in the process of their creation. The artist makes her own pigments from a diverse array of materials including charcoal, aluminum, concrete, glass, soil, mica, graphite and foils, many sourced from sites of architectural demolitions in and around New Delhi. She is interested in the textures of her pigments as well as their colors, which is a direct result of how they reflect light. Her compositions, noted for their density and complexity, are mathematical formulas which are established and then violated, resulting in a balance between structure and chaos. Goel’s paintings can also be read as linguistic systems, as meaning is constructed only through laborious repetition.

The artist is interested in the idea of the Screen, which painting has always been analogous with. We can trace the Screen through the trajectory of Art History from the flatness of Egyptian art to the simulated three-dimensional space of the Renaissance, back to the flatness of Modernist Abstraction. Goel’s works elaborate a dialogue for painting acknowledging the digital screens in which most of our information and images now reside, exploring both the limitations and the freedoms to be found within this flux. The title of the exhibition refers to this sense of synthetic replication, once seen as anathema to the concept of the Sublime but today very much compatible with it.

Tanya Goel was born in New Delhi in 1985 and studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, before completing her Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from Yale University in 2010. She has had one solo show with Nature Morte in New Delhi (2017) and two with Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke in Mumbai (2011 and 2015). Her works are in the collections of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; The Art Gallery of Alberta, Canada; and the UBS Bank, Zurich. She was a participating artist in both the Sydney and Gwangju Biennales in 2018 and will be featured in The Dhaka Art Summit 2020.
 

NATURE MORTE

Founded in New York's East Village in 1982 by Alan Belcher and Peter Nagy and closed in 1988, Peter Nagy revived Nature Morte in New Delhi in 1997 as a commercial gallery and a curatorial experiment. Since then, Nature Morte has become synonymous in India with challenging and experimental forms of art, championing conceptual, lens-based, and installation genres and representing a generation of Indian artists who have gone on to international exposure. The gallery has been located in its multi-level space in Neeti Bagh, central south Delhi, since December 2003. In addition, the gallery has maintained multiple branches in various locations: Berlin (2008-2014), Calcutta (Bose Pacia Kolkata 2006-2009), and at the Oberoi Gurgaon hotel (2011-2014). Formerly partnered with the Bose Pacia Gallery in New York, in 2013 Aparajita Jain became the co-director of Nature Morte.

Nature Morte was the first gallery from India to be included in the most important international art fairs (staring with The Armory Show in New York in 2005) and has participated in Art Basel, FIAC Paris, Art Basel Miami Beach, Paris Photo, Art Dubai, Tokyo Art Fair, Art Basel Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi Art Fair, and Frieze New York, among others. Nature Morte has also organized projects and exhibitions with international artists coming to India, combining their works with those of Indian artists to foster cross-cultural communications. In addition to its own programming, Nature Morte has collaborated with institutions in India such as the British Council, the Alliance Française, the Sanskriti Foundation, the India International Centre, the India Habitat Centre, Max Mueller Bhavan, the Italian Cultural Center, Khoj International Artists Association, the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, and the National Gallery of Modern Art in both New Delhi and Mumbai. Today, Nature Morte represents such well-known artists as Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat, Anita Dube, Bharti Kher, Mithu Sen, Imran Qureshi, Gauri Gill, Mona Rai, Pushpamala N., Seher Shah, LN Tallur, Thukral & Tagra, Raqs Media Collective, and Asim Waqif, as well as others. The gallery continues to foster new talent and add younger artists to its roster, as well as collaborate with museums and institutions around the world. Documentation of our exhibitions and the artists' works can be found on our website at www.naturemorte.com.

Nature Morte will be participating in the Frieze NY Art Fair for the fourth time, May 1-5, Booth C34. Artists’ works to be exhibited include those by Tanya Goel, Jitish Kallat, Reena Saini Kallat, Seher Shah, LN Tallur, and Imran Qureshi.