MANNAT GANDOTRA

Outside the possibility of worldly

Opening: May 8th, 6-8 PM

May 8th - June 3rd, 2025

Maybe caution works best when throw to the wind. The new paintings by Mannat Gandotra aren’t so much an evolution as they are an unexplored island in her archipelago. “Outside the possibility of worldly” shows us freer lines, bolder gestures as though Gandotra is playing chess with one hand and free-style jazz with the other. The Royal College of Art graduate likens her pictures to music: atonal, dissonant, visual loudness. Sometimes musicians will employ a graphic score as a starting point, allowing for a wider range of interpretations than, say, traditional notes and staves. Mannat is adamant that her paintings, too, are improvisations - rhythmic combustions. Improvisation itself is the act of making something not planned beforehand, using whatever instruments that can be found. The origin of the word comes from the Latin "improvisus", which literally means un-foreseen. Mannat  is conducting color in a type of spontaneous composition. 

And yet there’s something undeniably atmospheric about her work as well. Through this lens, we can see the paintings as architectural spaces with gaps and bridges, speed bumps and canopies. They are portals of disruption to alternative dimensions, touching on the spirit world sought after by the likes of Desert Transcendentalists. “I think of them as sentient beings with a mind of their own,” explains Mannat of her artwork. 

The  exhibition title speaks to a disassociation with the worldly realm, consciousness uprooted from terra firma, venturing toward astral planes beyond gravity. The writer C.S. Lewis published several science fiction novels including “Out of the Silent Planet.” The British author, noting his interest in the genre, stated that he wasn’t against science on the whole, but rather took issue with the notion of “scientism," our belief that science offers the only reliable perspective on existence. Mannat Gandotra, too, offers us as an escapist truth with her fantastical paintings.