|
The
home of my great-grandparents is graced by a gigantic mango tree.
As a child, I was taken by my grandmother to visit her mother and
siblings there. While eating iced cakes and cucumber sandwiches, I
used to gaze into the mango tree, marveling at its depth, breadth
and multitude of growing leaves and ends. I watched this tree
flower, fruit and feed the community with several thousand mangos
per year. It also housed hundreds of wild parakeets, beautiful moths
and butterflies.
The
first pieces in this series are lush in color and complex in form.
As the work progresses, the paintings become monochromatic with
symbolic punctuations of color. The latter part of the series,
contains more abstract work: shapes are compressed and simplified,
while color is flattened. These paintings share a contemplative
quality celebrating change and growth as experienced in nature and
humanity.
Currently, I am working with images of persimmons and lotus leaves.
I combine botanical and
anthropological forms to describe my relationship to the
environment.
These distilled forms, combined with layers of varying transparency,
convey my experiences and memories of life in the small town
of Kyung Ju, South Korea. By grafting the lotus leaves onto stems of
the persimmon fruit, I am synthesizing two distinct plant species.
This is often the way that memory works, recombining and filtering
truths.
In the same way that a honeybee
gathers nectar from a variety of blossoms, I garner images from
experiences and memories. After being brought to the hive, or in my
case-the studio, the nectar is processed into honey. This new
substance is a synthesis of flora and fauna.
The
titles of the work in this series are Korean. They have been chosen
randomly to express the incidental manner of acquiring language. As
such, they are simultaneously non-specific and distinct; reflecting
the ambiguity in form and color of the paintings themselves.
Date and Place
of Birth: 1971, Bombay, India
Education:
1995 BFA in Studio Arts, SUNY, Purchase, NY, graduated
cum laude.
1993 Two month summer session at the Scoula Lorenzo di
Medici in Florence, Italy
Solo exhibitions:
2008: Honey, solo show, Matrix Fine Art, Albuquerque, NM
2007: The Gallery at the Mesa Public Library, Los Alamos, NM
New Gallery Artist, Matrix Fine Art, Albuquerque,
NM
1994: Triangle Gallery, Purchase, NY
Group exhibitions:
2008: Victoria Arts Connection,
Victoria, Canada. Group show. Exhibition of book arts.
Santa Monica Art Studios, Santa Monica, CA. Exhibition of
South Asian contemporary artists
Queens Museum of Art, Flushing Meadows, NY
Tabla Rasa Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
The Guild Gallery, New York, NY
Brownson Art Gallery, Manhattanville College, Purchase, NY
Hammond Museum, North Salem, NY
Group show. Exhibition of contemporary Indian art in the
diaspora.
2007: Under 500, Matrix Fine Art, Albuquerque, NM
Harwood Museum, Taos, NM. Group show sponsored by the
National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Theertha Red Dot Gallery, Pitakotte, Sri Lanka
Montgomery College, Rockville, MD. Group show entitled
Rhythm and Blues
2006: The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Red Wing,
MN
2003: New Mexico School of Mines, Socorro, NM
1995:
Schwarinsky Gallery, New York, NY
Fellowships:
2007: Theertha International Artists’ Collective, Pitakotte, Sri
Lanka
2002: The Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Red Wing,
MN
|