and per se and: part XXIV - Floral Arabesque & Alexander Gorlizki

and per se and  is a rolling sequence of exhibitions where one work is paired with another for two weekly periods, across a stretch of 12 months. From today a seventeenth century Indian drawing of a floral arabesque is joined by the work of Brooklyn and Jaipur based Alexander Gorlizki. Gorlizki’s work follows that of Howard Hodgkin in what is now the 24th part of our 26 part series, and although their work is very different in tone and tempo, both artists are linked by a deep love and understanding of Indian painting. Hodgkin as a collector of great repute (the arabesque brush work drawing exhibited here was once in his collection) and Gorlizki in using the language and forms of miniature painting to make a distinct body of work that simultaneously celebrates and subverts the centuries old Indian tradition. Over twenty years ago Gorlizki established a studio in Jaipur with the master miniature painter Riyaz Uddin and ever since has continued to develop a new language that finds fertile ground in the diversity of contradictory cultures. For the 24th iteration of and per se and Gorlizki’s work appears in two distinct forms. The first, hanging across the gallery from the similarly sized drawing of the floral arabesque, is an exquisitely rendered drawing in black and white pigment on thick card depicting a stylised pattern of tiny wave-like forms gathered around white spheres, like fish-scales in a sky of many moons. Between the austere elegance of these two framed drawings a second, very different, work interjects a note of riotous chaos and offers a more direct clue to the artist’s way of thinking and working method in the shape of a cork board transplanted from his Brooklyn studio to the gallery wall. This window into Gorlizki’s mind is composed of over a hundred drawings and fragments of cards and scraps of material both ancient and modern, pinned and interleaved and covering the diversity of his interests from Tantric cosmology, ornamental topiary, popular culture, minimal abstraction and biomorphic symbolism to plumbing parts. It is a feast for the senses.