Hailing from Jodhpur in Rajasthan, the Indian artist Neeraj Patel seeks to explore the faults and glitches in the systems we engage with daily. His work spans mediums but always pays clear homage to the modernist movements, Suprematism and Minimalism. Nature Morte in New Delhi is currently showing NEERAJ PATEL: “extremes of ruin and utopic excisions”, a solo exhibition featuring three series of works by the artist. The first is an untitled set of large-scale paintings that explore our contemporary digital reality, replicating and abstracting the interfaces of our digital devices. The works in the other series are smaller; the first of the two, Industrial Landscapes, brings together low-relief pieces made from layered paper that explore the derelict industrial architecture of Baroda, Gujarat in India, where the artist spends a part of his time, living and working. Meanwhile, Entangled Spaces reduces the artist’s visual vocabulary to its barest minimum and includes works hanging on the wall that are composed entirely of metal.

The artist’s larger works are utterly captivating, not only for their skilled mark-making but also for Patel’s attention to detail. Take Synthesis of Difference II: the artist’s use of silver graphite on canvas adds shine to the work, creating the impression of a massive circuit board confronting the viewer in the exhibition space. There is something totemic about this piece in particular, albeit in a manner befitting the digital age. In-between space II is also compelling, and feels as though one is viewing a physical work that has been digitally broken: lines of colour run down the canvas, resembling the marks created by the breakage of an LCD screen. Fittingly, Patel’s mark-making has transformed the rest of the canvas into a series of glitches that create and break order.

These larger works at the art exhibition echo the geometric abstraction of Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, who pioneered the Suprematist movement. Malevich engaged extensively with the politics of his day, and given the rather urgent impression of Patel’s massive canvases, one wonders if he too is trying to comment on the political reality of our times through his art. The show’s curator Peter Nagy, who is also Director of Nature Morte, provides insight in an interview with STIR, saying: "'Political Reality' is a big term that encompasses just about everything. I think the works communicate something of the abstract and fractured way we now perceive the world, primarily through digital technologies, lost in fields of data and electronic impulses.”

...the works communicate something of the abstract and fractured way we now perceive the world, primarily through digital technologies… – Peter Nagy, Director, Nature Morte

Coming to the artist’s smaller works, Industrial Landscapes bestows a sense of fragility and uncertainty to industrial forms, which are often equated with strength and purpose. This rare sensitivity recontextualises architectural beauty and conservatorship, inviting us to reassess what it is we consider beautiful or deserving of preservation within our urban environments. To complicate matters further, they seem to question the very purpose of architectural conservation, asking us if decay too can be beautiful. Nagy sheds light on this series, telling STIR: “Patel's Industrial Landscapes certainly find beauty in the degraded, the obsolete, the forlorn remnants of industrial production. They find a certain nostalgia in heavy industry, before the advent of digital technologies, which is reflected in the paintings.”

Patel's Industrial Landscapes certainly find beauty in the degraded, the obsolete, the forlorn remnants of industrial production. – Peter Nagy, Director, Nature Morte

The art curator points out that as audiences, we are well-accustomed to antique and historical architecture being fetishised and re-purposed, and reads Industrial Landscapes as an attempt to move modernist industrial architecture into the same sphere. Patel’s show at Nature Morte simultaneously finds beauty in the industrial technology of a bygone era, while commenting on the monolithic digital entity we are now faced with. The show ran during Delhi’s much-celebrated India Art Fair (IAF), and one hopes that both local and international audiences to IAF 2024 were able to engage with this exciting body of Indian art, displaying Neeraj Patel’s compelling articulations of digital technology and industrialism.

NEERAJ PATEL: “extremes of ruin and utopic excisions” is running from December 23 2023 - February 10 2024 at Nature Morte.