CRITICS’ PICK : SANDEEP MUKHERJEE

Six stories above the noisy bustle of Chinatown, Sandeep Mukherjee’s first solo exhibition in New York (and the inaugural show of Brennan & Griffin) offers a quiet and beautiful respite. Manipulating various combinations of acrylic and embossed drawing on Duralene, the Los Angeles–based artist presents a suite of fine abstractions that evoke organic landscapes and natural phenomena. But beyond the likeness to dense forests and impressive mountain ranges, or any other suggestive symbolism, Mukherjee’s works are a serious exploration of pure form. They also evince a rigorous and laborious technical process, in which the artist reworks and removes acrylic ink from positive, embossed surfaces by hand. Mukherjee’s nearly alchemical skills are readily evident in several large-scale examples, including Untitled (all works 2010), wherein a multicolored mosaic-like pattern is set dramatically against densely layered planes of black ink. Even more successful are the black-and-white works that appear to defy even the mechanics of Mukherjee’s own process, balancing subtle reduction with a bursting abundance of forms on a unified plane. One elegant example is so unusually delicate that the viewer wonders whether its fine lines and edges might just fade away in a changing flicker of daylight.