Walkthrough with Girish Shahane and Aaditi Joshi

The team at TARQ is delighted to present an exhibition of New Works by artist Aaditi Joshi. The show features the artist’s latest explorations, that are a distinct departure from her earlier works. In these sculptural paintings she uses repurposed polypropylene bags as a starting point from which she investigates formal, art historical concerns, including the grid and the frame. Her continued focus on materiality and form make for an impressive showing, in what is a new medium for the artist.

This will be Joshi’s first solo exhibition at TARQ, and follows her participation in the group show “Wasteland” held in 2018, curated by Birgid Uccia, as well as solo displays at Gallery Maskara in Mumbai in the past. While her focus here remains still on the formal aspects of materiality and painting, the works are a radical departure from her earlier works which were composed of painted, and subsequently melted plastic bags. Here, she uses upcycled bags, wood, and cement to create strikingly minimal, yet powerful works. The show is accompanied by a text by Birgid Uccia, entitled “Who is Afraid of Plastic?”

In her essay, Uccia says,“The contrasts and conflicts of the city, its contradictions and uncontrollable expansion, unsolved tensions and dissonances, rapid changes and exchanges, constitute a vast phenomenon, incomprehensible in its totality. It is through the powerful language of art that Joshi enables the process of reading and imagining the city, a fascinating, poetic and monstrous entity, real and metaphorical at once, of which she as the Baudelarian spectator is herself a vital part.”