Avantika Bawa
Union Bank Tower
2017 graphite and pastel on paper 60" x 36" Available
Exhibitions
Statement
Avatika Bawa
Dislocation
July 5, 2017 to August 26, 2017
Union Bank Tower is a reductionist representation of the Union Bank Tower building located in downtown Portland. The salient feature of this International Style structure are it’s exposed service cores, which are clad in a dull green slate that was quarried from the same area in Wales as the stone used in Stonehenge.
Although my initial interest was the ‘dislocation of this material’, I realized while researching and sketching this building, I needed to see it from many vantage points, reference numerous books and online sources for a complete view and representation of it. In this process, I felt more and more personally distanced from the building itself, but was gradually and greatly enamored by it is wholeness, sheer verticality and formal qualities, such as the dominant stripes and negative shapes.
CV
Avantika Bawa is an artist, curator and educator based in Portland, OR, and often resides in her hometown, New Delhi, India.
Bawa has an MFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA in the same from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India.
She has participated in the Skowhegan, MacDowell Colony, Kochi Biennial Foundation and Djerassi residencies among others. Noteworthy solo exhibits include shows at The Schneider Museum, Ashland, OR, Suyama Space, Seattle, WA, The Columbus Museum, GA; Saltworks Gallery and the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center, Atlanta, GA; Nature Morte and Gallery Maskara in India; White Box, Tilt Gallery & Project Space and Disjecta, Portland, OR.
In April 2004 she was part of a team that launched Drain - Journal for Contemporary Art and Culture.
www.drainmag.com. In 2014 Avantika was appointed to the board of the Oregon Arts Commission. She is currently Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Washington State University, Vancouver, WA. www.avantikabawa.net
Her upcoming solo, Coliseum will be presented at the Apex space of the Portland Art Museum in August 2018. The show will highlight her drawings based on the Portland’s Veterans Memorial Coliseum, “a premier jewel of International Style modernism in the city.”