P·P·O·W is happy to current Tapestry, Srijon Chowdhury’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Oscillating between a extremely stylized approach and uncanny realism, the Portland-based artist’s prismatic compositions mine parts from each day life to seek out the common within the quotidian. Combining pursuits in philosophy, faith, ecology, and artwork historical past, Chowdhury’s intensely detailed, saturated, and hypnotic narrative compositions remodel the artist’s rapid atmosphere into immersive dreamscapes the place the boundaries between our bodily actuality and the metaphysical, mythological and the supernatural dissolve.
Chatting with subjective perceptual expertise, Tapestry goals to move the viewer on a visceral and emotional stage. On the middle of the gallery stands a welded metal round fence. Developed over a decade, the construction mimics the structure of a round mosque constructed by the artist’s ancestors within the coastal farmlands of Bangladesh. In Chowdhury’s development, Islamic geometric patterning is changed with the language of archaic sigils. The 2 halves of the sigil fence signify two poems by William Blake; “A Divine Picture” and “The Divine Picture.” Counterparts, the poems ponder the darkish and light-weight facets of humanity. Affixed to the fence is a collection of intimately scaled twists on conventional style portray. Potently charged and framed by the fence’s mysterious latticing, the work turn into the home windows of an encloser which is each remoted from and inseparably linked to its exterior world. Referencing different buildings akin to Giulio Camillo’s sixteenth century Theatre of Reminiscence and Buddhist prayer wheels, Chowdhury’s fence is supposed to be walked by way of, and activated by the viewers sensory expertise of picture, image, and structure.
Surrounding the fence are a number of immersive large-scale work, which act as each backdrop and panorama for the round construction. First exhibited in Similar Previous Tune, Chowdhury’s 2022 solo exhibition on the Frye Museum in Seattle, Mouth (Divine Dance), 2022, is a monumentally scaled portray comprising of 5 panels which depict a fiery inferno framed by parted lips. Shadow-like figures clasp fingers and dance amidst the flames, as if the entire of humanity has joined collectively of their shared destiny. Chowdhury additionally faintly renders greater than 100 motifs and figures from his prior works alongside the broad mouth’s lip creases, working as a survey of the artists’ wealthy symbolic lexicon.
In a lot of Chowdhury’s work, portraits of his household and pure environment could be considered as each direct representations and larger common archetypes. His engulfing floral patterns recall medieval allegories such because the unicorn tapestries which ponder the dualistic nature of need and love. In Tapestry, Chowdhury contains a number of depictions of a cherry tree that blooms annually for one week in his yard. Works akin to Andreas with Wildflowers, 2024, depict the artist’s buddy leaning towards the blossoming tree. Nonetheless, as a substitute of a home panorama, a riotous sea of wildflowers and sprawling tree limbs create a chic structure, punctuated by an summary “rose window” at prime of the canvas. For Chowdhury flowers signify a microcosm of the universe, of each spring and fall, life and demise, and the fleetingness and unattainability of the paranormal expertise.
Collectively, the works in Tapestry seize the mysterious and everlasting drama of the interior aircraft and purpose to mirror upon the best way artwork can be utilized to find magnificence and magic during times marked by local weather collapse and political turmoil. In Chowdhury’s references to mythologies of the previous, the current second is situated inside a bigger historical past of mysticism and devotion. As author SJ Cowan states, by way of Chowdhury’s works “the crises of the world could be considered because the miracle of existence made manifest.”