Govinda Sah 'Azad' + Judy Tuwaletstiwa: Boundless
July 20 - August 17, 2024
Govinda Sah 'Azad,' Absence Presence, oil and acrylic on canvas, 71 x 63 in.
London-based Nepalese painter Govinda Sah 'Azad' joins New Mexico acclaimed artist Judy Tuwaletstiwa in this exhibition of sublime imagery and awe-inspiring abstractions. Glass, paint, and mixed media compositions appear to inspire contemplation and a sense of boundless possibilities.
Judy Tuwaletstiwa, Text. Shards 4, 2019, kiln fired glass on canvas, 72 x 72 in.
The two-person exhibition that explores the concept of transcending elementalism through aesthetic uses of material. Both artists, Govinda Sah 'Azad' and Judy Tuwaletstiwa, use the mediums of paint and glass, respectively, to navigate a topography of elemental forces.
Like clouds on a remote planet envisioned in myriad temperaments through the lens of an orbiting satellite, the oil and acrylic canvases of London-based Nepalese painter Govinda Sah 'Azad' are rich with opalescent tones and, at times, a gritty surface finish. Evocative of landscapes, his abstractions never settle into definitive objects of time and place but appear as thresholds to realms of mystery and possibility.
Born in Rajbiraj, Nepal, in 1974, Sah 'Azad' learned to draw and sculpt by copying famous works of art. In his late teens, pressured by his parents to become a scientist, he ran away to Delhi, India, and worked as a sign painter before moving to Kathmandu in 1995 to study fine art.
Transcending the notion of more traditional cloudscapes, Sah 'Azad'’s paintings capture the essence of the emptying mind, its inner obscurations clearing to reveal internal truths, as readily as an atmospheric parting of the skies over terrain.
During a three-month cycling tour of Nepal in the midst of the Nepali Civil War he used art to spread a message of peace, holding art shows, workshops, and lectures. His subject matter shifted from representational forms to non-objective abstractions that convey a sense of expanding macro and microcosmic universes, but he makes no clear distinctions between them.
In 2008, under a private sponsorship, Sah 'Azad' earned his MA at Wimbledon College of Art in the UK. His work has since appeared in three-dozen solo and group art exhibitions internationally and is in multiple private and public collections in Nepal and around the world, including the Royal Collection in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
Judy Tuwaletstiwa’s interest in glass extends beyond its use as an artistic medium and includes interests in its history, chemical composition, array of colors, fragility, strength, and other dichotomies inherent to its amorphous nature. A writer, fiber artist, and painter for more than 50 years, Tuwaletstiwa’s, embrace of glass took off after she completed a residency at the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington state in 1998.
Moving from blown to kiln-formed glass works, a technique she mastered during a residency at Bullseye Glass, in Santa Fe, the Galisteo-based artist creates thin sherds of glass that require little annealing. Working with glass frits in a myriad of earth tones, she often creates large-scale compositions from components fashioned with little workmanship to allow the medium’s original nature to remain as integral elements to the work as much as possible.
“What I love about working with glass is how it synthesizes almost everything I’ve thought about over time,” she says. “Glass holds millions of years of geological time. It starts out as rock and becomes sand. It’s really about transformation.”
Her color studies in glass also evoke, in luminous tones, the simplicity in which artistic interventions transform base material into a simple expression of beauty. A ceaseless experimenter who works with found, natural objects, including animal remains, she often creates works across mediums, using silk threads to secure the glass shards used in large-scale compositions. Her works are in national and international museums and private collections.
View work by Govinda Sah 'Azad'
View work by Judy Tuwaletstiwa