Paraphrase

Aakash Nihalani, 3rd Avenue (L). Courtesy of the artist.

I have curated the summer exhibition at Arario New York, a gallery for Asian contemporary art located in Manhattan. Paraphrase features newly commissioned works by Aakash Nihalani, Cui Fei and Minette Mangahas. The exhibition will be on view June 26 - July 24.

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 gallery windows that run along 25th Street to exhibit new works on mirror.

Cui Fei, Manuscript of Nature (detail), 2002-present. Tendrils. Courtesy of the artist.

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, Flash #2, 2007. Ink and silver pigment on paper. Courtesy of the artist.

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, she will expand on this series in a large-scale wall installation that incorporates urban detritus.

Please join us for the opening reception (sorry, no sweets, just beer) on Thursday, June 25 from 6pm to 8pm.