Sanjay Vora: Path to Paradise at Seager Gray Gallery

Sanjay Vora: Path to Paradise

Sanjay Vora: Path to Paradise

Sanjay Vora: Path to Paradise FEBRUARY 2 - MARCH 6, 2022 Reception for the Artist: Sunday, February 6 from 3 - 5pm Front Cover: Path to Paradise, detail, 2021 78 x 106 in, oil, acrylic, gel and paper shreddings on canvas Back Cover: By the Row, detail, 2021, oil, acrylic, gel and paper on canvas, 72 x 96” Essay © 2022 Donna Seager Catalog Design: Seager Gray Gallery Direct all inquiries to: Seager Gray Gallery 108 Throckmorton Ave. Mill Valley, CA 94941 All rights reserved.

Sanjay Vora: Path to Paradise Seager Gray Gallery is happy to present Sanjay Vora’s “Path to Paradise,” a collection of largescale paintings reflecting on time and memory.

Vora’s work is a reflection on his life, derived from a lived American life as well as a cultural heritage rooted in East Indian traditions and music. Born in New Jersey into a musical Indian family, both his music and art have been strongly influenced by his bicultural upbringing as well as the surrounding rural American landscapes of his childhood.

“Path to Paradise” refers both to the title of the largest painting and to the idea that memories are held as a kind of “paradise” embellished by the misty filters of remembrance that can make them even more compelling than they were at the time. Experiences, so crystal clear in the moment, can be difficult to hold on to as they recede into the past.

Vora navigates the space between past and present by creating a cataract-like veil between the image, (faithfully recreated from photographs) and the surface using acrylic medium in most of the works and shredded paper in the title image. These media obscure the original scene, while retrieving them subtly with small carved windows into the surface or by adding suggestive bits of color within the layers. The end result is dreamlike and abstracted with subtle clues that aim not to recreate the original scene, but to capture its meaning and tone.

In his own words, “My current bodies of work examine the fragility of the actual; the processing of our place in the now. The acknowledgement of time haunts, holds, and cuts through each painting as a structure and order, a system in place which continuously tests my eventual acceptance. Painted experiences and materials of association become connections as they intersect, live and pass through interstitial, transitional moments towards adulthood and endings--lost, found, dissected, excavated and/or reconstructed into sensations driven by comfort.”

The title image, “Path to Paradise,” at 78 x 106” is one of the artist’s largest and most abstracted works yet with the veiled surface created by a combination of shredded paper and gel medium.

The effect is stunning, allowing the edges of the paper to interact with the air around it. The image is of an idyllic time in the artist’s life, a college trip to the Bahamas with his best friend who is seen walking up from the beach – that kind of moment that you wish you could bottle and keep with you forever. This is a case where medium mirrors message when you consider the time-consuming effort to apply small bits of paper to a work this expansive. The surface evokes a feeling of harmonic dissonance, charged and diffused at the same time.

Many of the paintings refer to events from the artist’s New Jersey childhood. “By the Row,” for example, begins with a snapshot of him and his brother playing in the snow. The row of trees was for them a visual boundary separating the private world of a child’s back yard from that of his neighbors.

That same back yard appears in “The King of New Jersey,” an image of his father sitting in a lounge chair in the summertime, a small child’s pool in view in the right foreground. The scene is such a slice of Americana, repeated in the memories of so many growing up in the suburbs – a scene not of opulence but of safety and comfort and seemingly having all you need in the moment. In actuality, the artist recalled that the weather was formidably hot and his father had a cast on his leg – perhaps a glimpse at the complexity between a child’s view and the responsibilities of adulthood.

These paintings provide a stark contrast between the simplicity of the backyard world and the complexity of the times we live in now. “My pieces become visual experiences, coming to terms with the command and inevitability of time. Brought up in a suburban American home steeped in East Indian heritage and repetitive modal music, I now attempt to resolve my own sense of meaning and truth, endlessly searching to remember and rediscover that which was once familiar.”

“Look over There” comes from a family visit to Cornwall, England when they went to visit his uncle who lived in London. The figure pointing is his uncle pointing at something along the shore. This image has touchstones to memory for the artist, but is the most ambivalent for the viewer and the artist has allowed that, leaving room for varied interpretations.

“Dreaming of the Hills” is an idealized landscape aimed at capturing the bliss sometimes experienced in a perfect landscape. In this one, the diffused colors, informed by the sun come through the veil more clearly.

In speaking of the exhibition, Vora reflected on the word “familiar” and spoke of his investigations on time and experience as a means of grappling with mortality in this everchanging world. The word, “familiar” draws associations to concepts of comfort and safety knowing exactly where you are in the scheme of things, a fleeting and illusive sense of identity that appears when looking back to have once been solid.

- Donna Seager, January, 2022

Path to Paradise -------------------------------78 x 120 in oil, acrylic, gel and paper shreddings on canvas 2021 detail left

By the Row -------------------------------72 x 96 in oil, acrylic, gel and paper on canvas 2021 detail left

The King of New Jersey -------------------------------76 x 96 in oil, acrylic, gel and paper on canvas 2021 detail left

Look Over There -------------------------------76 x 96 in oil, acrylic, gel and paper on canvas 2021 detail left

Dreaming in the Hills -------------------------------66 x 96 in oil, acrylic, gel and paper on canvas 2021 detail left

Sanjay Vora Education MFA in Painting, San Francisco Art Institute, May 2005 BS in Architecture, University of Virginia, May 2002 Solo Exhibitions 2022 2018 2015 2014 2013 2010 2008 2006 2005 2004 2003 2001

Path to Paradise, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA Together and Apart, Vessel Gallery, Oakland, CA Lost Love, Vessel Gallery, Oakland, CA Memories of Dreams, Gallery Bergelli, Larkspur CA Re/Surfaces, Vessel Gallery, Oakland, CA Rhythmic Sequences, Vessel Gallery, Oakland, CA Recurring Vision, Gallery Bergelli, Larkspur, CA Imprint, Vessel, Berkeley, CA Reflection, Gallery Bergelli, Larkspur, CA House|Home, Gallery Bergelli, Larkspur, CA The Surrounding Landscape, Gallery Bergelli, Larkspur, CA Love, Memory and Nostalgia, Gallery Bergelli, Larkspur, CA Three Paintings, Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco Field, Memory, and In Between, Mudhouse, Charlottesville, VA Love and a Video Store, Sneak Reviews, Charlottesville Mindscape Paintings and Drawings, Gallery Neo, Charlottesville The Ghost in the Garden, Newcomb Hall Gallery, Charlottesville

Selected Group Exhibitions 2020 Carried Places, Harrington Gallery, Pleasanton, CA 2019 Personal Structures, Palazzo Mora, Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy Stillness Within, Arkitektura Assembly, San Francisco, CA Material Matters, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA 2018 Material Matters, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA 2017 Excuse Me, Can I See Your ID? Vessel Gallery, Oakland, CA Powder and Smoke, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA Motive, Vessel Gallery, Oakland, CA 2015 Notions of Romance, Vessel Gallery, Oakland 2014 Material and Meditation, Vessel Gallery, Oakland Shades of Summer, Vessel Gallery, Oakland 2013 Vessel as the Human Form, Vessel Gallery, Oakland Landscapes: Near and Afar, Vessel Gallery, Oakland 2012 Horizons of Promise, Vessel Gallery, Oakland, CA Vessel 8: Charting the Waters, Vessel Gallery, Oakland, CA Faculty Show, Dept of Art Practice, Worth Ryder Gallery, University of California, Berkeley 2011 Portraits, Vessel Gallery, Oakland, CA Fall Faculty Show, Worth Ryder Gallery, University of California at Berkeley Winter Group Show, Gallery Bergelli, Larkspur, CA 2010 San Francisco International Art Fair, Herbst Pavilion, SF, CA 2007 Square Foot Show, Art Gotham Gallery, New York, NY Home, Root Division, San Francisco

2006 Choice Art, The Garage, San Francisco Artwallah, Bamboo Lane Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Artwallah, South Asian Arts Festival, Los Angeles, CA Arts On Fire X, Sanchez Art Center, Pacifica, CA 2005 2nd Biennial International Juried Exhibition, the Presidio, San Francisco New California Masters, Works San Jose, San Jose, CA Prevue, Starpin Gallery, Shelton, CT SFAI MFA Exhibition, Herbst Pavilion, Fort Mason, San Francisco Haunted, Crucible Steel Gallery, San Francisco 2004 2a Biennale Internazionale d’ Arte di Ferrara, Castello Estense, Ferrara, Italy Ad-Hoc, Crucible Steel Gallery, San Francisco Bay Area Emerging Artist Exhibition, 710 Market St., San Francisco Bay Area Eight, Artist Television Access, San Francisco Professional Experience Visual Arts Teacher, Fall 2005 – Present, St. Paul’s Episcopal School, Oakland, CA Visiting Lecturer in Painting, Fall 2011 + Fall 2012, University of California, Berkeley, Master Artist, Summer 2010, Public Works Commissioned by Roundtree Visuals and Kaiser Permanente to design and implement two 6’ x 14’ murals in two Trauma Center quiet rooms.

Graduate Teaching Assistant, Spring 2005, San Francisco Art Institute, CA Graduate Teaching Assistant, Fall 2004, San Francisco Art Institute, CA Bibliography Morris, Barbara. “Critic’s picks: San Francisco”, Art Ltd. Magazine, February 2017 Frank, Priscilla, “Dismantling Stereotypes About Asian-American Identity Through Art”, Huffington Post, April 2017.

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