Proofs

Proofs

October 20 – November 24, 2012
The Bike Room, Chicago, IL

“The Bike Room is pleased to announce Proofs, new work by Surabhi Ghosh. Initiated during her residency in El Bruc, Cataluña, the projects on view codify intricate spatial constructs, expanding and elaborating Ghosh’s preoccupation with the circle.

Exploding the object-centric physicality of her earlier imagery like so many shattered Gaudí mosaics, Ghosh has opted for a new logic of figure-ground interface. She delineates a cosmic space constructed of negative shapes – tangents, eclipses, vertices and circumferences coagulate like dotted ghosts leaving circular holes.

It is as though Ghosh has scrutinized Northern Spain through an orb-shaped filter, and through it, further geometries unfold. Arabesques and Gothic motifs, architectural embellishments and empedrados – Ghosh re-forms these artisanal traditions into new narratives. Like the Islamic mathematics that once gave way to the arts, astronomy, cartography, engineering and other perplexities, Ghosh’s compass-like arcs, stars and needles evoke instruments created to measure the heavens. They at once illuminate and conjure larger mysteries.

Traditional crafts are sensual to the touch, revered for their revelation of the human hand. Ghosh’s chartings are texturally exquisite. They blanket milky sheets of translucent Mylar with layered fields both substantial and ethereal, spare and ornate, microcosmic and infinite.”

– Gallery director and curator Nancy Lu Rosenheim