Detail of Prevenient 2013, Ghee and Gold Dust on Linen

Payal Arts International is thrilled to announce Ajay Kurian's debut solo exhibition in India at Jhaveri Contemporary.

Privation by Ajay Kurian

            "In 2008 I began silkscreening clarified butter onto paper.  About a year later, I perfected the process and graduated to working on linen, dusting the freshly applied ghee with a golden dust, allowing the image of ghee to come into focus, if a bit hazily.  It appeared almost like a revealed image in a shroud.  I couldn’t tell whether the image was appearing or disappearing.  The patterns I use come from two sources, either from the interior of a security envelope - like one you might receive from your bank - or from scientifically derived quasicrystalline patterns, which often feel like they could be a pattern for envelopes as well.  The overlap between them is complicated, but simply put, I was interested in the patterns that were evocative, occasionally incomplete, and non-periodic in their repetition.  The paintings or shrouds that resulted are all titled Prevenient but often with an additional parenthetical title.  I took the word Prevenient from a theologian named John Wesley who coined the phrase “prevenient grace”, which I’d loosely describe as the preliminary grace necessary to then achieve actual grace.  I liked this moment before truly entering into grace - this provisional moment - and what might be necessary to experience this provisional state, like a solemn dance routine towards transcendence. The paintings are a result of this kind of wondering, shifting, and dusting. Their quiet is a kind of provision for understanding, a word I mean with the utmost empathy.

            Nevertheless, these works exist in a marketplace, and this made me apprehensive about what one was actually purchasing, and what I had made a purchase on as well, namely, spiritual real estate.  Additionally, I had made a cheap purchase of culturally loaded materials, such as ghee, linen, and gold.  And the only way I felt I could continue making these paintings is if they began to reflect my anxiety about that purchase, their circulation, and their status as spiritual commodities.  To show an honest face meant to show both faces, to reveal that with the angel comes the devil.  This Faustian turn is what has made these paintings real gateways to me.  I do not know who goes through them, nor what occurs any more. 

            The other objects that populate the exhibition, such as discs of burnt bread each with the fire-gnarled face of Janus, and boxes of a local curry of Kerala with a slight irregularity, offer up different provisions and suggest a more complicated web of references that might dismay a viewer looking for the ease of simple abstraction, because in the end what I’ve realized is that abstraction is a dangerous thing.  Abstraction easily becomes the violence of the coin."  

Privation opens on September 12th at Jhaveri Contemporary in Mumbai, India.

To view images please visit http://www.jhavericontemporary.com

Cat Fight, 2013, Mixed Media

e.vil, in collaboration with Payal Arts International, presents Alison Knott: Cat Fight, an evening of fine art and fashion. To celebrate the launch of a new line of clothing that features Knott’s work, a selection of the artist’s collages will be on display at e.vil, which is located at 666 Broadway on Bond Street, New York, NY 10012. Please join us for a reception with the artist on Thursday June 13, 2013 from 6-8pm. 

Cat Fight is a series of collages created in 2012-13 that combine photographs taken by Richard Avedon for a Versace catalogue in the 1990s with “The Tiger Hunt,” an early seventeenth century painting by Peter Paul Rubens. “These works are like self-portraits,” says Knott. “New York is an aggressive city and at times I am hypersensitive to the overall experience. Like a tiger on the attack, this city can be both ferocious and unrelenting.”

e.vil and Knott have collaborated on three ready to wear silk dresses that will be featured in the boutique. e.vil is committed to producing clever and colorful clothing concepts to sustain its fashion forward brand concept by redefining the word "evil," e.vil means: strength, wit, humor, indulgence, beauty and intelligence all in one. 

Alison Knott is a Brooklyn-based artist who received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her artworks have been exhibited in New York City, and are included in several private collections throughout the United States and Europe.

For any press or fine art sales inquires please contact payal@payalartsinternational.com

To view images please visit www.alisonknott.com

Mahatma Gandhi, Mr. & Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Pandit Nehru, Bhulabhai Desai & Birla Family, 1942 Vintage Gelatin Silver Print, Estate of Jayant Patel, Bombay Photo Stores Private Ltd, Calcutta

Please join Payal Arts International and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Tuesday October 23rd, 2012 from 6-8pm in the nation's capital for an evening highlighting the photographic archive of the late Jayant Patel.

We are pleased to invite you to a presentation of Jayant Patel’s vintage photographic estate depicting India from 1940 to 1970. David P. Good, veteran diplomat, former U.S. Consul General in Mumbai, and a student of recent Indian history, will offer remarks on the significance of Patel’s work. Following the presentation Ashley J. Tellis will outline Carnegie’s plans to launch a research center in New Delhi. Jayant Patel was the official photographer to the Raj Bhavan in Calcutta, the seat of the British governance in Bengal until independence and later the residence of the Indian governor of West Bengal. Working from his Calcutta studio, Bombay Photo Stores, Patel processed film for the U.S. and British military during World War II, and was in a position to witness the major events of India’s independence struggle in eastern India as well as the early days of the new Indian republic. Patel’s work captured decisive moments involving dignitaries such as Mahatma Gandhi, British governor of Bengal Lord Casey, Jawaharlal Nehru, and visiting leaders like China’s Chiang Kai-shek. For his personal pleasure, Patel also photographed scenes of Calcutta in the 1940s, and locations elsewhere, including Kashmir, Darjeeling, Agra, and Orissa – a priceless record of a bygone time in India.

Click here to download event invitation.

Payal Parekh consults Room East, a contemporary art gallery located in the Lower Eastside. The gallery was profiled in the Wallpaper Style File.

Click here for link to video and full article.

Bruce Irons Dropping Into Pipeline North Shore, Hawaii, December 2000, Color C Print

LOST WEEKEND NYC in collaboration with PAYAL ARTS INTERNATIONAL presents Michael Halsband: Surf. Opening reception will be held at Lost Weekend NYC on Thursday December 15th, 2011 from 6-9pm. This exhibition of photography captures the surfing communities of Southern California, Hawaii and Australia. Prints hang alongside Halsband's award winning surf documentary Surf Movie: reels 1-14 (2003). In The Surf Book (2004), Halsband's epic comprehensive survey of surf culture, he states:

"I grew up in Manhattan and, for as long as I can remember, I dreamed of being a surfer. I got my first taste when I was twelve years old, when my family was on vacation in South America. After years of coming close, I finally decided to start surfing full on. Little did I know that one day being a professional photographer would help bring me deep into the heart of surf culture and history. During the past four years, I have been accepted into this microcosm in a way that makes me feel as I have been surfing my whole life. The figure that made this possible is the legendary Joel Tudor. The adventure I have been on with him has exposed me to some of the people who have been crucial to the evolving technology and culture of surfing. I have sat, listened to, and photographed these individuals as they opened up with Joel in ways that they never would have with anyone else. There is a mutual respect between Joel and these individuals that is both deep and loving.”

Michael Halsband is a graduate of the School of Visual Arts. His photographic work includes iconic portraits of Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, The School of American Ballet, and sex industry workers. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the world and has appeared in Vanity Fair, Time, Interview, ARTnews, GQ, Vogue, Life, and Self, among other publications. Payal Arts International in New York City represents Michael Halsband. Connections, an exhibition of twenty gelatin silver prints of 8x10 portraits by Michael Halsband is simultaneously on view at The Mandarin's Tea Room in SoHo, New York.

To view images please visit www.michaelhalsband.com

West Village from Visions of a Fragmented Mind, 2011, Archival Digital Print

Bose Pacia, in collaboration with Payal Arts International, is pleased to present Transparent Hallucination with new video and photography by New Delhi and London-based artist, Siddhartha Tawadey, 8 September – 22 October, 2011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday from 11 to 6 pm and Saturday 12 to 6. There will be an artist reception on Thursday, September 8th from 6 to 8 pm. The artist will be in attendance and the public is invited.

Siddhartha Tawadey’s Transparent Hallucinations is a two part exhibition that endeavors to engage the frenetic and psychologically dissonant mindscape of New York City. Having recently completed a residency at the School of Visual Arts, in New York, all works have been conceived and created in the city and were inspired by the artist’s navigation of its urban spaces.

In spending his summer hours, days and weeks exploring NYC, Tawadey became overcome by the stark juxtapositions of a city that seemed, to him, constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. No single moment, however, was located entirely in a state of chaos or staid calm. As such, the artist has begun to explore these seemingly inextricable poles of a collective subconscious resulting in two distinct areas of creative engagement, each addressing a specific area of emotionality.

The video, 23.98, explores a sense of anxiety and desperation. Tawadey states that “this psychosis was expressed as metaphors in the film through emblems such as painting and scratching on film reels, quick editing of glimpses, rapid montage, use of black, layers, superimpositions, appropriated footage time lapse, flicker, black and white imagery, in-camera editing, jump cuts and use of motion and the feel of an 8mm hand-held camera.” The result is an unsettling, if absorptive, video that harkens to the psychotic imagery of Italian neo-realist filmmaker, Michelangelo Antonioni.

As with any episode of frantic mental energy, there follows an equally suffocating period of emptiness and inactivity. In Transparent Hallucination this takes the form of the photo series, Visions of a Fragmented Mind. The photographs are “pure in composition and [use] a very restricted palette of colors to keep the images subjective and honest.” Tawadey captures happenstance moments of abstracted stillness in a city that is constantly moving.

The pairing of movement and stillness in the exhibition creates a space where the viewer can independently enter into the hallucinations of this neurotic city’s collective subconscious. By paring the imagery to inanimate objects and abstracted and disjunctive narratives, the artist allows each person to explore their own “self-referential sensations, emotions and revelations” in the context of Tawadey’s New York.

Born in Kolkata, India in 1975, Siddhartha Tawadey is a video and photography artist who studied at St. Martins School of Design (London 2008) and City University (London 2009). He has participated in group and solo exhibitions internationally. His works are included in many private collections. Transparent Hallucination marks the artist’s first solo exhibition with Bose Pacia. Tawadey lives and works in New Delhi and London.

To view images please visit: http://www.bosepacia.com/exhibitions/2011-09-08_siddhartha-tawadey/installation-views

Installation view of Andy Warhol & Jean-Michel Basquiat, New York City, July 10, 1985 By Michael Halsband

The Andy Warhol Museum's presentation of Mixed Signals opens on May 26th, 2011 - August 2011 and features work by artists including Tim Hadfield, Wardell Milan, Duane Rieder, and Michael Halsband. 

Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports is a traveling exhibition organized and circulated by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York. Guest curator for the exhibition is Christopher Bedford. Mixed Signals is an expanded version of Contemporary Projects 11: Hard Targets -Masculinity and Sports, an exhibition curated by Bedford and organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

Mixed Signals features works by contemporary artists that probe the stereotype of the American male athlete. This particular theme has become increasingly prevalent during the past several years. The exhibition features such well-known artists as Matthew Barney, Catherine Opie, Collier Schorr, and Sam Taylor-Wood to emerging talents such as Shaun El C. Leonardo and Joe Sola. Mixed Signals demonstrates that the male athlete is a far more ambiguous figure in our collective cultural imagination than ever before. Using elements of wit, sarcasm, and controversy, these artists challenge cultural assumptions that gender is natural or innate. Instead, they emphasize the many ways masculinity is always performed, coded, and socially constructed, perhaps even more so in the spectacular, media-saturated field of sports. Rituals of male bonding typical to various sports are explored as well. Another key theme of this exhibition pertains to the materials, symbols and regalia of sports that signify the prowess of the wearer. Additional artists featured in this exhibition are: Mark Bradford, Marcelino Gonçalves, Lyle Ashton Harris, Brian Jungen, Kurt Kauper, Kori Newkirk Paul Pfeiffer, Marco Rios, and Hank Willis Thomas.

For more information on the show please visit: http://www.warhol.org/responsive/event.aspx?id=2909

To view images by Michael Halsband please visit www.michaelhalsband.com 

Into the Light, 2002 by Prabir Purkayastha, Archival Pigment Print

Vanishing Spirits: Photographs by Pablo Bartholomew, Prabir Purkayastha and Amita Talwar is lead by a strong team including Exhibition Curator, Priyanka Mathew of Sotheby’s; Exhibition Director, Karen Stone Talwar; Director of Sales, Payal S. Parekh and Director of Marketing, Neil Ghosh. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Salaam Baalak Trust, founded by philanthropist and filmmaker Mira Nair. Wendt Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of their new exhibition Vanishing Spirits on view from September 8th through September 17th, 2010.

There is a rich tradition of Indian photographers who continue to provide a vessel to catalog the constant decimation and regeneration of this great landscape. Vanishing Spirits is an exhibition of photographs that brings together the work of three photographers; Pablo Bartholomew, Prabir Purkayastha and Amita Talwar; as they capture rare and dissipating modes of existence in the country. The artists isolate and draw upon social conditions and transforming landscapes – freezing in time studies of social constructs that make up India.