Surabhi Ghosh in her studio. 2014 Individual Artist Fellow, Oregon Arts Commission.
Photo: Sabina Poole
Originally published January, 2014
Surabhi Ghosh’s work spans the micro to the macro. She uses the accumulation of small dots to build forms such as circles, dots, and hexagons. Another body of work is constructed of strips upon strips of cast off garments. All of these eventually generate pattern, making a form greater than the sum of its parts. Ghosh has equated her process of tracing emerging patterns with “improvising visual polyrhythms.”
Ghosh suggests that these patterned forms, particularly in her Satellites series, “assert that the microscopic and the cosmic are linked by the human ability to discern and transcend differences in scale, distance, and perspective.”
Dig lightly into her history, and her relationship with the decorative-the visual information on the periphery-is illuminated. A portion of her BFA studies were in fabric design. What does it mean to foreground through process the patterns and rhythms of repeating images we are every day confronted with in the visual landscape?
In addition to her studio practice (and her academic career) Ghosh devotes time to not one but two platforms for the exhibition of work by her contemporaries.
Since 2004, Ghosh has been director, co-founder, co-publisher, co-editor and member of Bailliwik (www.bailliwik.org), an artists’ collective and collaborative organization that produces a yearly book and website, showcasing more than 30 artists, writers, and musicians in each issue, the most recent being Issue 10 of Autumn 2013.
Ghosh is also a member of Ditch Projects, an artist-run studio, installation, and performance space located in downtown Springfield, OR. Last year, she had a solo exhibition, Fields, at the space and also showed with the collective in a group show, Dumb Angel, at the 12128 arts space in Portland.
Last summer, Ghosh had an Open Studio Residency at Museum of Contemporary Craft where she created a large-scale fabric composition expanding her series, Striations, an ongoing project inspired in part by Gee’s Bend quilts. Ghosh invited visitors to bring old trousers or jeans and help her piece long strips together.
Ghosh holds an MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a BFA in Studio Art and Fabric Design from University of Georgia, Athens. She taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the departments of Fiber and Material Studies and Writing for six years before joining the University of Oregon in Eugene as Assistant Professor and Fibers Coordinator within the Department of Art in the fall of 2011. Her work and collaborative projects have been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland; Lillstreet Art Center; Threewalls, Rona Hoffman Gallery, The Bike Room, NEXT Art Fair and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago in Chicago; ; Gray Matters, Dallas; Western Washington University, Bellingham; and University of Georgia, Athens, among others.
In 2014 Ghosh will present an exhibition at Culture Room in New York.
Courtesy of The Oregon Arts Commission.
Artist Credit: Surabhi Ghosh
Exhibition: Oregon Arts Commission Fellows