LOCATION: 21, Arsiwala Mansion, First Floor, Wodehouse Road, Colaba, Mumbai -- 400005
Gallery XXL is pleased to announce the opening of its permanent space at 21, Arsiwala Mansion, First Floor, Wodehouse Road, Colaba, Mumbai - 400005 on January 11, 2024. Bringing the global movement of urban contemporary and post-graffiti art to Colaba, Mumbai, the gallery’s permanent space is housed in a building where Georgian and vernacular architectures converge – resonating with the spirit of the gallery that activates, connects and expands diverse practices which occupy the studio and the street.
Launched in early 2023 with a survey exhibition titled OUTSIDERS, Gallery XXL introduced urban contemporary art to the Indian cultural landscape and brought together 23 Indian and International artists whose practices span from the studio to the street. Now, coinciding with Mumbai Gallery Weekend (MGW), Gallery XXL is opening its space with the exhibition sans sentense.
The show speculates the identification with, deduction of and imaginations that emerge from language and its visualisation. With artworks from Al Qawi Nanavati, DO, Hanif Kureshi, Khatra, Lakshmi Madhavan, Latheesh Lakshman, Sowat, Tanya George, and ZERO, the exhibition is an inquiry on freedom of (and from) different modes of expression as one investigates the relationship of the ineffable, the body and time with the conception and perception of language.
A large part of the exhibition is extending from Gallery XXL’s effort in presenting Indian and International artists who are critically reinventing urban art techniques and situating them within a gallery space. In this sense, this exhibition is an effort to also look at the phenomenon of post-graffiti art and artists who have engaged with the reduction and deconstruction of letters within diverse scripts. The exhibition opens up questions surrounding the politics of language and examines its role in shaping the social fabric, prodding deeper into what defines the form, the lack and the surplus in different spoken, written, visual and body languages.