The Noida-Based Artist Explores A New Visual Vocabulary With The Geometric Form At Nature Morte And The Frieze Art Fair
As you stroll into the brand new Nature Morte gallery at The Dhan Mill compound in Chattarpur, New Delhi, two overlapping black squares repair you to the spot with a hypnotic presence. You are pulled into its vortex and, as you progress nearer, little particulars swim into focus. The refined strains that run throughout the floor of the oil pastel on paper, the heavy gold pigments that turn out to be heat and daring, the void and the body that draw you into a spot of contemplation. It is a visible engagement that teases the attention and stimulates the thoughts.
It is the primary time that the gallery is working with artist Parul Gupta, who is understood for artwork ‘born from minimalism’ — they seem deceptively easy at first, after which reveal their advanced packages. It can also be her largest solo present so far. Still, on the verge… presents a variety: drawings on paper made with ink, charcoal, oil pastel, gold pigments, in addition to sculptures of painted aluminium coated in industrial paint.
Nature Morte’s pandemic launch
- In the midst of the pandemic, artist and gallerist Peter Nagy was busy. “We’ve been wanting to move from Neeti Bagh because we needed more space. So, last summer, we took advantage of the lockdown,” he says. Now, Nature Morte has two galleries open. “The Dhan Mill space is our primary display space, while Vasant Vihar [where their offices are] has a small gallery where we can put up shows with a quicker turnaround, that’s more spontaneous.” Two areas additionally imply the chance to have newer artists, says Nagy, including that we will sit up for a solo by Manish Nai, at The Dhan Mill in September.
In each, Gupta seduces the viewer with the phantasm of the ‘doppelgänger’ (the dual type). Her fundamental topic is the sq., but the geometric type is torqued, layered, multiplied, and confounded to create works of heightened tensions. “I began my investigation with the square in 2018. It was a form that fascinated me, yet I was not able to work with it in the manner that I wanted. So, I locked myself up in my studio and decided not to take on any other project until I was able to figure out my relation with it,” says Gupta, 40. The artworks — a number of which can also be being featured on Nature Morte’s on-line viewing room at Los Angeles’ Frieze Art Fair — examines her interpretations of house and the thought of structure.
Playing with layers and gradation
When Gupta works in architectural areas, the work she creates turns into a part of the house — “it is in conversation with the structural elements and visual vocabulary of that space”. What stunned her, nevertheless, was how her engagement with pigments evoked a way of the royal. “I used black because of its intensity and ability to frame the empty space in the centre and gold because, visually, it balances and softens the black,” shares the artist, including that she labored with knowledgeable automotive painter to use industrial paint on aluminium.
Her engagement with colored inks on archival paper is one other ongoing experiment. “The gradation of the colours is intentional [based on precise mathematical calculation] since it evokes a sense of movement and interaction with each other,” she tells me. (She had her first public sale sale through the second wave, in May — Ink Drawing #15 offered for ₹49,500 at Saffronart’s Art Rises for India public sale.) Summing up her non-narrative artwork, she says, “It is a visual study of geometric, mathematical and architectural elements that impact our ways of looking at our surroundings.”
