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Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco presents:
Rina Banerjee: Tender Mahal - Lifted
For her first project at Hosfelt Gallery, Rina Banerjee brings together a monumental, pink, Mughal-inspired sculpture and a group of her delicate and sensuous paintings on paper, in a paean to the potential of 21st century love.
Banerjee, who was born in Kolkata, India and lives in New York, works with a cosmopolitan eclecticism that reflects both her transnational background and her sophisticated understanding of the narrative power of objects. Her works are hyper-ornamented and lushly seductive. Conjoining rarities with cheap, mass-produced bric-a-brac, she appropriates extravagantly while rejecting hierarchies of material, culture and value.
The sculpture at the center of this installation takes its form from the Taj Mahal. Often cited as the most beautiful building in the world, it is the epitome of Mughal architecture - an amalgam of elements of Islamic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish and Indian styles - a design hybrid born of two thousand years of incursions, migrations, invasions and colonization. The Taj Mahal is also the world's most famous monument to romantic love - a lavish and unabashed public display of affection.
Banerjee's palace is rendered in pink plastic rather than white marble. It's decorated with fake pearls, cowrie shells and florist's moss rather than jade, turquoise and carnelian. A marriage of high and low culture, it is a mutation - emblematic of a world constantly in flux - of societies continuously reshaping their belief systems. It is a refusal to make judgments based on traditional notions of beauty, importance, worth or usefulness. For the first time in history, Banerjee argues, humanity has an opportunity to consider love outside concerns of reproduction or patrimony and beyond issues of race, gender or religion. This exhibition is a tender tribute to the emergence of love for the sake of love.
DATE/TIME:
28 May - 13 July, Opening: Saturday, 8 June, 4-6pm
LOCATION:
Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco
260 Utah Street
San Francisco, CA, 94103
415-495-5454
http://hosfeltgallery.com
COST/REGISTRATION:
Free
MORE INFO:
Website: http://hosfeltgallery.com
Email: info@hosfeltgallery.com
Phone: 415-495-5454
Contact: Nicole Lampl
About Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco:
Hosfelt Gallery has shown international emerging to mid-career artists since 1996 in San Francisco. In fall 2012, Hosfelt expanded into a new 8,900 sq ft San Francisco venue. Our program is built around artwork with a refined level of execution that addresses critical inquiries in relation to the history of art, culture, politics, and intellectual discourse.
