"Paraphrase" Exhibition
Arario Gallery
This event has ended.
"Paraphrase" takes the act of writing as its starting point. The title—meaning a restatement of a text or passage; to put something in your own words; or to give meaning in another form—suggests how these artists approach long-established written and visual languages. Nihalani, Cui and Mangahas translate word forms, characters and letters in distinct ways, yet their works intermingle and overlap in the space of the exhibition. The artists share a particular affinity in their relationship to the outdoors and site-specific practice.
Rising street artist Aakash Nihalani started “bombing” the streets of New York City with his colorful isometric forms just over a year ago. What began as repetitive silkscreen studies in the studio later developed into Nihalani’s signature approach to open-air installations. Using tape as his sole medium, he highlights the geometry of the city—from subway signage to a slab of concrete—with clean rectangles, squares and cubes. Employing the modus operandi of graffiti writers, Nihalani revamps public space, offering fresh perspectives and creating room for new words and ideas. His installation for Paraphrase will make use of both the walls and floors of the gallery. He will also utilize the windows that run along Arario’s south wall (facing 25th Street) to exhibit new works on mirror.
Whereas Nihalani primarily works outside, Cui Fei typically works indoors but gathers her materials from nature. Using organic forms such as twigs, tendrils, leaves and thorns, she arranges them on the wall to evoke the vertical strips of Chinese calligraphy. Her manuscripts symbolize, as she states, “the voiceless messages in nature that are waiting to be discovered and to be heard.” Cui’s ongoing installation Manuscript of Nature V (2002-present) will be on view along with a new in situ piece composed of thorns.
Minette Mangahas explores the affinities between calligraphy and graffiti, thus relating the two forms. For her series Flash, she photographed, and interpreted graffiti tags on the streets of Oakland, San Francisco and New York and interpreted them through the lens of East Asian calligraphy. Mangahas studied with the celebrated Japanese Zen calligrapher Kazuaki Tanahashi for eight years. The title of the series comes from her experience of seeing street pieces, which “often have people's attention for a flash of a moment.” At Arario, the artist will expand on this series in a large-scale wall installation that incorporates urban detritus.
[Image: Aakash Nihalani "Here is New York" Tape, Site-specific, dimensions variable]
Media
Schedule
from June 26, 2009 to July 24, 2009
Opening Reception on 2009-06-25 from 18:00 to 20:00