Galerie ISA is honoured to welcome back artists Idris Khan and Annie Morris for their third solo exhibition in India.

This new body of work expands on the artist couple’s deep-seated, almost intuitive understanding of colour; use of repetition in their practice and individual focus on mark and line-making while also showcasing experiments with new ideas, new forms and new materiality.

Idris Khan continues to explore the universal language of music by layering musical notations with rich hues. Delving further into coloration, he introduces more expressive mark-making, obscuring the musical notations and transforming the work into a highly textural visual experience.

This method of creating and then simultaneously erasing has been firmly established as the artist’s signature. Khan further embeds layers of text and imagery into the surface, creating a palimpsest that reflects the accumulation and erosion of memory as well as the compression and expansion of time. Khan reflects that in many ways the past determines and directs the surfaces of the future.

It’s through this technique of layering and obscuring text and creating imagery (that can best be described as ambiguous) Khan aims to strip words of their literal meaning, empowering them with a strong visual identity and also letting the work evolve on viewing. In this very unique way, the surfaces have both visual and emotional density. By using glass, Khan furthers the experience—oscillations in opacity and shadow open up the layers— allowing the viewer to pay close attention and see the surface in a new light. The artist invites the observer to project their own memories and interpretations resulting in a journey that is highly introspective.

In experiencing Khan’s work, it’s important to recognize repetition as a key element in his oeuvre. This design principle allows the artist the freedom to explore new possibilities providing a fine balance between control and disorder, structure and spontaneity. Khan also cleverly subverts the concept of musical compositions. By making them visual forms and by using colour and repetition, they evoke a rhythm and emotion that is inherent in music. For Khan, the ultimate quest is to be able to view a work and almost hear the brushstrokes.

Finding a language for things that can’t be said is at the very heart of Morris’ practice. Repetition plays an integral role in her expression. In her sculptures, or Stacks, as they are popularly known, these reiterations are meditative, a way of finding joy and light amidst chaos and darkness. For Morris line drawing has always been a pillar of her practice. Often using life experiences, these drawings evolve into three dimensional forms, bringing the lines into space. Over the years, these exuberant works have taken on new heights and complexity, the forms testing the limits of balance and structure, but still remaining upright and strong, an apt metaphor for resilience and healing during times of crisis.

The exhibition also features embroidered tapestries (emotionally raw renderings of the female form), two new bronze works, and ‘Petals’, a framed, two-dimensional spherical iteration, created from a combination of wood, plaster, sand and pigment. This particular work serves as a stylistic twist, but also a progression, a continuation of conversations on vulnerability and endurance inspiring transformation and renewal.

Morris’ extraordinary use of colour is striking—Cadmium Red, Cobalt, Viridian Green, Turquoise— intensely pigmented, vivid shades that exude powerful energy. Colour is escapism. She references the use of pigment in Renaissance frescoes and in each body of work, the chosen palette is the result of an intuitive, emotional and often phenomenological response.

While Khan and Morris’ practices and approaches are both significantly different, where these two artists find professional and personal synchronicity is in their core underlying belief— to beautifully intertwine the values of their individual and shared pasts with the creative energy of the future.

Priyanka R. Khanna