Nasreen Mohamedi
Untitled, ca. 1970s Ink and graphite on paper 7 1/2″ x 7 1/2″
We are delighted to present, the grid, unplugged–an exhibition of important group of drawings by one of the essential twentieth-century artists from India, Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-1990). The works on view represent a significant body of the artists’ oeuvre from the 1970s and are being exhibited for the first time in the United States. Mohamedi, employing pen and pencil, transformed the nineteen and seven-inch squares of paper into a tour de force. Remarkably executed over three decades ago in an environment where narrative and figurative art was the rule, Mohamedi’s clarity of pursuit and resolve is matched only by the taut tensile energy resonating through the lines. Dismantling the rigidity of the grid, she infuses them with a dynamic rhythm that at times soars, dives, expands, and collapses. Like the footsteps of sunlight through a courtyard or wind sweeping over water, they are abstract in form but not in experience. Her drawings suggest the magnanimous yet simple phenomenon so truly that they infuse an awe-inspiring chill as to the immensity of our experience and the poverty of means used to elicit it.
"This show of large abstract drawings is the third New York solo of work by the Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi (1937-90) and the most beautiful yet, which means it's about as beautiful as gallery shows get."
Holland Cotter, THE New York Times
Untitled, ca. 1970s Ink on paper 7 1/2″ x 7 1/2″
Nasreen Mohamedi was born in 1937 in Karachi, India and passed away in 1990 in Kihim, India. Since her first solo outside of India at Talwar, New York in 2003, Mohamedi has been featured in numerous museum exhibitions worldwide. Mohamedi has been the subject of solo presentations at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET Breuer), New York (2016); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (2015); Tate, Liverpool, UK (2014); Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, India (2013) and The Drawing Center, New York (2005). Mohamedi’s works have also been on view at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY; Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia; Documenta XII, Kassel, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Harvard University Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; Institute of Arab and Islamic Art, NY; Fotomuseum, Winterthur, Switzerland; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO; and Whitechapel Gallery, London. This is her second exhibition at Talwar where in 2003, for the first time, her body of Photographic works from the 1960s to 1980s was on view.