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Artworks
Manish Nai India, b. 1980
Untitled, 2019Old books and wood91 x 10 x 7 in
231.1 x 25.4 x 17.8 cm7324Further images
This untitled sculpture by Manish Nai is a column made from stacked secondhand books from the artist’s personal collection. Nai has collected more than 5000 second hand books, which he...This untitled sculpture by Manish Nai is a column made from stacked secondhand books from the artist’s personal collection. Nai has collected more than 5000 second hand books, which he mobilizes towards different ends within his practice. The series of book columns to which this work belongs involves Nai’s aesthetic inquiry into what a book is that cannot be read, or a sculpture that can’t fully be seen. Nai is interested in the notion of how everyday objects possess minimal aesthetic qualities totally unrelated to their intended functionality. The books he collects are notable because of the ways the paper brown with age. Different factors determine the rate of aging, and different materials interact with air, light, and moisture in different ways.
His book sculptures expand upon Nai’s ongoing meditation on time itself, as compressed layers of paper settle into distinct strata like sedimentary rock. The sequencing of the innumerable pages and subtle tonal shifts as distinct layers brings a new kind of clarity to the substance. In the case of the stacked book towers, while the forms are cleaner and more minimal than ever before, the contents remain elusive, refusing access to their text. Their history as books is immediately accessible, but their content as text is arrested in time, frozen inside the sculpture.
Nai’s pieces are studies in tedious complexities, and elegant simplicities. The media that he uses are usually cheap and ubiquitous, alluding to both hierarchies of artistic media and Indian social structures. His vision for socially-conscious minimalism has earned Nai global attention as a crucial voice for Indian contemporary art. Paying mind towards the complex intersections of material culture, art history, class relations, and autobiography, his geometrically simple forms distill the essence of contemporary Mumbai.Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions
2016 Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris, France
2015 Manish Nai, Kavi Gupta Chicago | Elizabeth St., Chicago, IL
2014 Galerie Karsten Greve, St. Moritz, Switzerland
2013 Art Basel Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Presented by Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke 2012 COMPACT, Galerie Gebr. Lehmann, Berlin, Germany
2010 Extramural, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai, Catalogue essay by Girish Shahane
2009 Manish Nai – New Works, Galerie Karsten Greve, Cologne, Germany, Curated by Julia Ritterskamp
2007 Threading A Coded Path, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
2005 Minimal Structures, Apparao Galleries, Delhi and Chennai
2004 The Museum Gallery, Curated by Pinakin Patel Selected
Group Exhibitions
2014 Ethereal, Leila Heller Gallery, New York, NY Kochi Muzirus Biennale, Kochi Midnight’s Grandchildren, Kitab Mahal, Mumbai, Curated by Girish Shahane
2013 The Material Point: Reconsidering the Medium on the (Post)modern Moment, Gallery OED, Kochi, Curated by Dr. Kathleen Wyma
2012 Asia Art Archive Fundraiser, Hong KongThe Indian Parallax or the Doubling of Happiness, Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Kolkata, Curated by Shaheen Merali 9th Shanghai Biennale, Mumbai City Pavilion, Shanghai news, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai The Skoda Prize Show, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi Art Dubai, Dubai, Presented by Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke Art HK12, Hong Kong International Art Fair, Hong Kong, Presented by Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke [examples to follow!, Premchand Roychand Gallery, Mumbai, Curated by Adrienne Goehler
2011 Abstract Articulations, Gallery Espace, New Delhi Home Spun, Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon, Curated by Girish Shahane 5th Anniversary Exhibition, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai India Art Summit, New Delhi, Presented by Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke India Inclusive: Contemporary Art from India, World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, Curated by Tasneem Zakaria Mehta
2009 PANORAMA: INDIA, ARCO_Madrid, Madrid, Presented by Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke Relative Visa, Bodhi Art Gallery, Mumbai, Curated by Bose Krishnamachari
2008 Second Edition of Art Summit, New Delhi, Presented by Apparao Galleries Gallery Weekend at the Baumwollspinnerei, Leipzig, Germany, Presented by Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
2007 1st Anniversary Exhibition, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
2005 Present-Future, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, Curated by Dr. Saryu Doshi 2003 Beppu Asia Contemporary Art Exhibition, Beppu Museum, Japan
2002 Singapore Art Fair, presented by Apparao Galleries, Chennai 2000 Monsoon Show, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai
Awards
2012 Invited to North Rhine-Westphalia Artist Residency Programm, Düsseldorf, Germany 2011 Invited to Socrates Sculpture Park Residency, Long Island City, New York
2004 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award
2004-2005, New York
2000 Best Watercolour Painting Award by the Bombay Art Society
Press and Publications
2015 Lee Ann Norman, “Review: Manish Nai/Kavi Gupta Gallery,” Newcity Art, July
2015 “Manish Nai Opening,” Eye On India, June
2015 Christopher Hudgens, “Episode 511: Manish Nai,” Bad At Sports Contemporary Art Talk, June
2015 Sunthar Visuvalingam, “Seeing Beyond Space and Place Through Indian Contemporary Art,” News India Times, June
2015 Sunthar Visuvalingam, “Manish Nai Opens With Panel on Contemporary Indian Art,” News India Times, June
2015 Lauren M. Heist, “From the community: Eye on India Festival Comes to Lemont.” Chicago Tribune, May
2015 Niranjan Kunwar, “Kochi and Consciousness,” The Huffington Post, January
2015 2014 Riddhi Doshi, “A ground report from India’s biggest art show in Kochi,” Hindustan Times, December
2014 Dhamini Ratnam, “Manish Nai: The Proceduralist,” Livemint, August
2014 Anita Mahadevan and Manoj Nair, Art List, Arts Illustrated, June - July
2014 Rosalyn D’Mello, “Artwork of the Week: Manish Nai’s Newspaper Wall at Art Basel in HK,” Blouin Artinfo, May
2014 2013 Zehra Jhumabuoy, Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing, Phaidon Press
2013 Karuna John, Breaking the Canvas, India Today, February 2013
2012 Rosalyn D’Mello, Blouin Artinfo India 2010 Amrita Gupta-Singh, “Textures of Silence,” Art India, September
2010 Zehra Jumabhoy, “Critic’s Picks,” Artforum, August 2010 “Pixel Power,” Timeout India, August 2010
