Soumya Netrabile Exhibition

The Journal Gallery (45 White St.)

This event has ended.

For her New York solo debut, Soumya Netrabile expands the dialogue between nature and the human form in her twelve new paintings, all oil on canvas. These works explore an undoing of landscape through the recontextualization of the corporeal. In rendering the wild with precise, yet bold and sometimes frenzied, brush strokes, Netrabile captures the movement of light and sensation in our natural world and simultaneously depicts a certain uneasiness in our relationship to it.

The structures inherent in nature lend themselves to our human anatomy. Netrabile’s paintings illustrate this in a diverse array of flesh tones, while also introducing lively greens and deep blues. There’s a democratizing of the hierarchy of ecosystems in her compositions—the canvases limn a shared space of belonging and engagement. In these works, one can smell the moist soil, taste the moon, and seek refuge under an umbrella of light. To view them is to find oneself in harmony with all of life.

Netrabile’s representation of light and color, handled distinctly in each painting, imbues them with a sense of magic. Her landscapes swallow any human presence with their lushness. How do we know what came first? Is imagination a fraction of the vibrant reality of our environment? Netrabile engages this inquiry with brush and paint. Her canvases pulse with the heart of the forest and cradle her painterly inventions.
– Aekta Khubchandani

Soumya Netrabile was born in Bangalore, India in 1966. She received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois and a BSEE from Rutgers University, College of Engineering in Piscataway, New Jersey.

Netrabilie’s recent solo and group exhibitions include EXPO Chicago 2022 in Chicago, Illinois (2022); “Open Your Mouth + Taste the Spores” at Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago, Illinois (2021); “Wish You Were Here” at Anat Ebgi in Los Angeles, California (2021); “Hot Tropics” at LaLoma Projects in Los Angeles, California (2021) “I Wake To Sleep” at Part 2 Gallery in Oakland, California (2021); “Brindar Con Extraños.” at Trinta Gallery in Santiago de Compostolo, Spain (2020); “Event Horizon” at Terra Incognito in Oak Park, Illinois (2019); and “Scratching Below the Surface with Zach Balousek” at Firecat Projects in Chicago, Illinois (2018).

Soumya Netrabile lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.