Synopsis:

Sullivan + Strumpf presents 'FOLDED PIERCED STRETCHED', a solo exhibition by Kanchana Gupta at Gilman Barracks in conjunction with Singapore Art Week 2022.

In her fourth solo show in Singapore, Kanchana Gupta exhibits a dexterous interweaving of the potentialities of process and materiality. Originally from India, Gupta currently lives and works in Singapore and her works are both the means for a personal exploration of, and a thoughtful response to, the urban environments she inhabits, linking the two metropoles of Mumbai and Singapore, each of which she has called home.

Over the last half a dozen years, Gupta has pursued her fascination with the materiality of paint with the excavational zeal of an archaeo-anthropologist, directing her investigations into the physicality of the medium. Examining it through processes such as heating, burning and tearing, creating flattened, wallbased works and sculptural installations. Her process involves a continuous mining of weaves, textures, patterns and structures through which she mediates an ongoing social reality. The works presented in this exhibition extend Gupta's earlier meditations on sculpture and intentionally oscillate between two-and three-dimensionality. At first glance, visually and texturally, the tarpaulin sheets look deceptively like found objects—discarded tarpaulin lifted from construction sites. In reality, however, they are the culmination of meticulously controlled transformations. With her dermal tarpaulins, Gupta commences an interrogation into the complex social interactions whereby identity is both externally conferred and internally assembled—and it is the tension caused by the encroachment of one over the other that Gupta seeks to emphasise.