Sangram Majumdar |Foreign & Domestic
On View:
September 8 - October 7, 2017
Opening Reception:
Friday, September 8, 6:30 - 8:30pm
Sangram Majumdar, Backstage, 2014, Oil on Linen, 84 x 78 inches.
Barbara Davis Gallery is pleased to announce Foreign & Domestic, a solo exhibition of paintings by Sangram Majumdar. The exhibition opensSeptember 8th, 2017with an artists' reception from6:30to8:30 PMand is on view throughOctober 7th, 2017.
Rooted in perception, and working from found and fabricated sources, Majumdar's work explores the gap between what we think we know and what is right in front of us. Whether hovering above a room or an inch from a mark, we are always asked to verify our place in his paintings. The poet and critic John Yau in writing about his work has stated that “Majumdar, who was born in Calcutta, India in 1977 and emigrated to Phoenix, Arizona in 1991, recognizes that culturally speaking he has two sets of memories, and that disruption is inescapable. Their relationship is unstable, and each intrudes on the other, often when least expected.” His achievement is a rigorous pursuit of the perceptual experience, expanding the perimeters of contemporary representation.
Majumdar is a sensualist. The paintings unfold slowly, releasing a sensory knowledge that can only be embedded in haptic encounters. Small, intimate ‘premier coups’ live comfortably next to larger tableaus. Rebuilt dollhouses, digital collages, handmade drawings, or discarded utilitarian objects lie around in his studio. Often, the motif of the interior repeats, but in each iteration, we find ourselves relocated, rooms, walls, windows, places, surfaces and openings. We enter his grandfather’s living room in Kolkata, glance at a sunlit wall across his Brooklyn studio, or go backstage where colored light and personified forms steer the viewer. Majumdar’s paintings map out a terrain that parallels the very act of seeing. They ask us to embrace our apprehensions of being in more than one place at a time. The gaze barely settles.
Born in Kolkata, India, Sangram Majumdar received his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, and his MFA from Indiana University. Recent solo exhibition venues include Asia Society Texas Center, TX, Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, NY and Rothschild Fine Art, Tel Aviv, Israel. Recent group exhibition venues include James Cohan Gallery, NY, Gallery Zürcher, NY and Tiger Strikes Asteriod, PA. He is a recipient of the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo residency and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Space Program Grant. His work was included in the 2010 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts at the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a Professor of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Foreign & Domestic opens September 8th, 2017 with an artists' reception from 6:30-8:30 pm.This exhibition is on view September 8th through October 7th.
For more information, please contact Barbara Davis Galleryat713.520.9200
or .