Sreshta Rit Premnath
Proximity
18.03 - 20.04.2022

In his second exhibition with Rodriguez Gallery, Sreshta Rit Premnath continues to consider the fragile and tenuous claim to space made by the disenfranchised. When a stable location is no longer guaranteed to people, their sense of belonging is resituated in spaces of intimacy. It is this space of “being-with” that Premnath focuses on in Proximity.

Sculptural works made with ink and paper are accompanied by diagrammatic ink paintings. Titled Hold/Fold the sculptures resemble unfolded cardboard boxes stretched beside or atop each other. They approximate the dimensions of bodies and suggest sites for temporary respite. Suspended bottles drip ink onto these floor pieces through IV tubes, creating puddles that continue to mark and change the artwork during the exhibition.

Premnath’s paintings are a continuation of his Margin series. Premnath uses chain-link fencing as a stencil to produce marks that, in the artist’s words, become “a kind of threshold or margin between a here and an elsewhere.” These references to borders are paired with passages of gestural abstraction—pools and drips of ink—that reveal the artist’s hand. Premnath also regards the viewer’s body as an element of these works, augmenting their allusion to “the paper-thin—and imaginary—character of borders and other kinds of enforced separation.”

In considering the space and time of proximity Premnath asks: What is the shape of being with? How do we visualize the space between us? How do we trace the perforations and spills that blur, permeate and penetrate the imagined boundaries that separate one from another? If we accept difference—radical difference—to be the condition of society, is politics the science of negotiating and shaping proximity?

Projekt dofinansowany z budżetu Miasta Poznania