Patterns (The Falling Figures and other stories)

Patterns

(The Falling Figures and other stories)

CCA is pleased to invite you to Patterns (The Falling Figures and other stories), an installation by the artist Praneet Soi that will open Friday 27th October at 7pm (please note: this is a Friday opening).

Living and working between Amsterdam and Kolkata, India, Praneet Soi often develops work through an intuitive understanding of his social, economic and cultural landscape. One of his continuing concerns is the casting of a personal narrative over politicised subject matter.

Patterns (The Falling Figures and other stories) is presented across CCA’s three gallery spaces and is Praneet Soi’s most significant exhibition in Ireland and the UK to date.

Choreographed in a specific order, the installation at CCA includes recent paintings produced by the artist in his studio in Amsterdam. Works such as September, Part 2 use a combination of drawing and painting techniques to depict diverse references such as the architecture of the Twin Towers; the cover of a book by Dr Massumeh Farhad – an eminent scholar of Islamic Art; and media imagery of war-torn Syria, outlined in silverpoint, connecting drawing to a history of photography. The Falling Figure, a newly commissioned metal sculpture, activates the paintings through the creation of a personal narrative.

A video work incorporating footage filmed in Dublin and Derry is presented alongside other research in a series of video-collages. The film features the artist’s documentation of the workers, materials and architecture of Smyth & Gibson, the only remaining shirt factory in Derry; the Minto Album – a collection of Mughal-era illuminated manuscripts held at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin; and images and text related to Indian revolutionary M.N. Roy’s time in Mexico. The video is projected onto a specially-designed curvilinear wall in the middle gallery at CCA.

Patterns (The Falling Figures and other stories) also includes Srinagar – on loan from the Van Abbemuseum collection – an installation centred around 47 hand-made papier-mâché tiles meticulously painted with experimental motifs in the atelier of master craftsperson Fayaz Jan in the Kashmiri capital of Srinagar. The tiles are surrounded by intricate wall drawings in chalk. These include reproductions of documents relating to the formation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir after the partition of India in 1947. The main image is a scientific diagram illustrating anamorphosis from the album of Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus. Anamorphosis, a technique used to distort imagery, has become, for Soi, a metaphor to describe the disturbed nature of everyday life in Kashmir – currently one of the most militarised regions on the planet.

For more information about the artist please visit Praneet Soi’s website.