BRISTOL.- Autumn 2022 at
Arnolfini sees internationally renowned artist Bharti Kher return to the southwest, with a major solo exhibition exploring her alchemical practice through drawing, sculpture and the spaces in between.
The Body is a Place follows the unveiling of Khers 18-foot-tall painted bronze sculpture Ancestor in New York in September 2022, and her celebrated installation at this years Venice Biennale in the lyrical setting of The Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello.
A collector of material and meaning, Kher gathers words and marks, filling the Arnolfini like the clean white page of one her numerous sketchbooks and diaries, sharing the hand-brain-body-art-language which weaves throughout her two and three-dimensional forms.
Featuring a body of previously unseen drawings, created during residencies in Somerset in 2017 and 2019, The Body is a Place reveals the cyclical nature of Khers work. Looking at drawing as part of a wider practice which gathers a world of objects and a world of words, the exhibition furthers our understanding of an artist who simultaneously straddles magical, mythical, and scientific realms.
Khers intuitive practice also brings into play the bodily senses I hear it, taste it, eat it, write it, draw it describing drawing as a means of knowing; an idea that lies at the heart of this exhibition, encouraging audiences to adopt the artists own curiosity in feeling out narratives amidst her drawings and sculpture.
The Body is a Place also features Khers monumental bindi drawings and the installation Links in a chain, which playfully exchanges word and image. There is quiet solitude to her Chimera casts, in which the artist buries the secrets of the soul under layers of wax and plaster; and the impossible shapes and forms of her balance sculptures. Alongside is a new, large-scale, site-specific iteration of Virus; conceived in 2010 and executed annually as a 30-year project incorporating her bindi drawings and text, it offers an intimate portal into Khers world.
The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication exploring Khers visual language, interweaving an introduction and conversation between the artist and curator Gemma Brace. It features essays from art historian Jo Baring, and director of the Drawing Room Kate Macfarlane, alongside over 60 images, with new work and intimate photos of the artists studio.
The exhibition will be open Tuesday to Sunday each week, 11am to 6pm, entry is free, with bookings available in advance via arnolfini.org.uk.
Bharti Kher is represented internationally by Hauser & Wirth, Perrotin, and Nature Morte.