Biraaj Dodiya (CRF 2022) is part of a two person show, alongside Heidi Lau, at Bureau Gallery on the Lower East Side. In Shadow Speak, on view until April 15th, Mumbai-based Dodiya presents a suite of large paintings alongside several assemblages of painted wood and small canvases. Lau, a Macau-native based in New York, presents a group of ceramic works, featuring her recent experiments with cast glass in addition to several vessels, free-standing objects and wall reliefs.
“Dodiya’s compositions capture and envelope the viewer’s body within painted psychological landscapes. Between sculpture and painting, her totem-assemblages disrupt the authority of the two-dimensional picture plane where faceted surfaces generate new landscapes from fractured and adjoining topographies. Dodiya’s works bear traces of their making and unmaking; layers of earthy pigment accumulate and erode as the act of painting gives way to burial and excavation. The large compositions shift from a distanced perspective to an encompassing geological scale, where vibrations of tectonic movement seem to resonate and engulf; the feeling of earth and form emerge slowly, the way water carves rock. These works might present an answer to the question, what is landscape without light? For Dodiya the works embody the violence of time, suggesting ‘there is no landscape without ruin, there is no body without failure.'” Learn more here.
Image: Biraaj Dodiya, Suddenly, a Tree, 2023 (detail, left) and Heidi Lau, Withering Tree Full of Jades and Moons, Reaching for Rain, 2023 (detail, right).