Selections Fall 1998
September 12 – October 22, 1998
ViewJayashree Chakravarty
September 12 – October 22, 1998
This exhibition of work by Calcutta-based artist Jayashree Chakravarty featured an installation of layered scrolls that explored topography, memory, and mythology. Chakravarty's installation included ten individual panels/scrolls of layered paper and fabric from 1997-1998 constructed with glue, acrylic, and enamel.
Curator Peter Nagy wrote, "Only a few years ago, Jayashree Chakravarty's paintings featured rubbery, dreamy figures floating around each other, activated by feather-like brushstrokes and sour colors. This style of painting is popular in contemporary India, conveying something of the striving aspirations and claustrophobic lifestyles of the masses while retaining an elasticity and playfulness we associate with traditional Indian mythology. Slowly Jayashree began to remove the figures and refine her palette. This shift came naturally to the artist, unaware (as artists usually are) that a breakthrough was in the making. As she began to work with pattern and texture alone the rectangular canvas became stifling and her compositions required a looser, flowing support. Paper served best to present a multi-layered, twisting scenario of mapping and mark-making; borders could be ignored and directions discarded. Jayashree's works remind me of the anxiety of a traffic snarl in 110 degree heat, the glory of a mountain top sprinkled with 860 temples, the limitless expanse in both space and time of a country and a culture coded as intricately as the human genome model. Freedom may be mythical but myth-making does come naturally."
Read the New York Times review here.
Curated by Peter Nagy of the Nature Morte gallery, New Delhi.
Ephemera
Installation Photography
Press
Credits
The Drawing Center received support from the following sources: Chase Manhattan Foundation, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, The Charles Engelhard Foundation, Enterprise Foundation, Fifth Floor Foundation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Abby and Mitch Leigh Foundation, The Felix and Elizabeth Rohatyn Foundation, William D. Rollnick and Nancy Ellison Rollnick Foundation, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Adler Family Foundation, agnès b, The Bohen Foundation, Frances and John Bowes, Jerome Foundation, Lannan Foundation, The John McEnroe Foundation, Edward John Noble Foundation, The Peter Norton Family Foundation, Harriet Ames Charitable Trust, The Art Store, AT&T Foundation, CDC North America, Inc., Christie's, Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Cowles Charitable Trust, Katherine Farley and Jerry I. Speyer, Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc., Larry Gagosian, The Greenwall Foundation, The Greenwich Collection Ltd., Agnes Gund & Daniel Shapiro, Mr. & Mrs. John H. J. Guth, Home Box Office (HBO), Johnson and Johnson Family of Companies, Lafarge Corporation, Jo Carole and Ronald Lauder, Mr. & Mrs. Paul Mellon, Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, JP Morgan & Co., The New York Times Company Foundation, Philip Morris Companies Inc., Katharine and William Rayner, Saul Rosen Foundation, Arthur Ross Foundation, The May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc., Louisa Sarofim, Joan and Marc Sherman, SoHo Grand Hotel, Roy & Niuta Titus Foundation, Weingart Foundation, The Institute for Museum and Library Services, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts and The Drawing Center's National Council, Friends, and Members.