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Yamini Nayar: If stone could give

Feb 21 — Mar 30, 2019

Offsite location:  3344 24th Street, San Francisco, CA

Exhibition Opening: Thursday, February 21, 6 – 8 PM | Exhibition Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 AM – 6 PM

For more information, please visit the gallery website, here.

Gallery Wendi Norris is pleased to present “If stone could give”, an exhibition of new photographic works by Yamini Nayar, marking her first solo exhibition with the gallery and her West Coast solo debut.  On view February 21 – March 30, 2019 at 3344 24th Street, San Francisco, CA

“If stone could give” explores the fundamental intersection of sculpture and photography in Nayar’s artistic practice. Bearing strong reference to both Modernist architectural structures, informal building strategies and corporeal forms, the works invite viewers into distinctly psychological environments. Nayar’s compositions draw visually on the relationships between architecture and the body, and the cultural, emotional and spatial resonance of our constructed surroundings. Like the exhibition’s title, “If stone could give”, the works on view blur the boundary between animate gestures and inanimate constructs.

Within her studio, Nayar builds her sculptural subjects from simple materials – cardboard, plaster, house paint, wood, string, cut paper and photographs, and other industrial materials and studio debris. Nayar documents the process of construction and deconstruction in hundreds of film and digital photographs.

Ultimately, she creates a single photographic image as the only relic of the tableaux. The laborious process of building and unbuilding remains only in memory and metaphor as she destroys the sculpture to start anew. Nayar describes her work as “exploring psychological relationships to the built environment, the tensions between planned and informal architectures, memory and erasure, material and psychic spaces.”

The exhibition presents large and medium-scale photographs mounted on Dibond and frameless, leaning or hanging on supports within the environment. The presentation invites the viewer into a space of process and further blurs the lines between object and image.  

“If stone could give” is Gallery Wendi Norris’ fifth offsite exhibition and is presented at 3344 24th Street in San Francisco. Built in 1924, the building boasts classic San Francisco architectural elements, including a small un-finished basement characterized by low ceilings and exposed framework. Like Nayar’s artworks, the space boasts juxtaposing characteristics of refined and raw, light-filled and cavernous, new and old.  At the heart of the Mission District, the exhibition is adjacent nearby cultural institutions including the The 500 Capp Street Foundation, Kadist Foundation, Galería de la Raza, The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, The Women’s Building, Ratio 3 Gallery, Et Al. Gallery, and more.

ABOUT YAMINI NAYAR

Yamini Nayar makes large scale photographs from complex and elaborate sculptures she builds within her studio. Deeply inspired by architecture, urban communities and conceptions of modernity, Nayar employs a process-oriented approach to de-construct and redress visual associations attached to their histories. Her works suggest interior landscapes, psychological environments, still-lifes and at times the flatness of Cubist painting. Although seemingly devoid of the human presence, Nayar’s work investigates the tension between dimension and flatness, spatiality and the body.

Nayar is based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections, including the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Art Institute, Chicago, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Massachusetts, the Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio, Queens Museum, New York, Saatchi Gallery, London, Queensland Art Gallery, Australia, and United States Arts in Embassies, Washington, D.C.. Her work has been featured in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Art in America and Frieze, among others. Nayar has shown locally in San Francisco at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, in the 2013 exhibition, “Migrating Identities”.

ABOUT GALLERY WENDI NORRIS

From its global headquarters in San Francisco, Gallery Wendi Norris represents Modern and Contemporary artists working in a variety of media around the world. The gallery specializes in re-contextualizing the work of Modern artists while providing connections to contemporary art, artists, and culture. Active on both the local and international stages, Gallery Wendi Norris mounts exhibitions where they are most relevant, and also works with individual collectors and museums in both the primary and secondary markets. Founded with an emphasis on scholarship and education, the gallery produces highly researched exhibitions and catalogues, sponsors artist talks, hosts visiting academics, and engages in public art projects.

Along with Yamini Nayar, Gallery Wendi Norris represents: Val Britton, Leonora Carrington, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Ana Teresa Fernández, Chris Fraser, Chitra Ganesh, Marcel Jean, Julio César Morales, Ranu Mukherjee, Wolfgang Paalen, Miguel Angel Ríos, Eva Schlegel, Dorothea Tanning, Remedios Varo, and Peter Young. For more information on these artists visit gallerywendinorris.com.