New York, NY - My Pet Ram is pleased to present Into The Fold featuring new paintings by Davis Arney and Aparna Sarkar.

Still life often enfolds an artist’s biography because it gathers the stuff of everyday life. Chosen objects are typically at-hand, either physically or, today, via the screen. When combined in a painting they form a narrative, making the still life artist both the storyteller and the protagonist. Painters Aparna Sarkar and Davis Arney take on a third role — as listener. Through direct observation and the close study of mediated images, both artists fold and find their lived experiences in the creases, patterns, and objects they describe.

In her studio, Aparna Sarkar lays out Indian family textiles, which she paints from life. She transposes the soft grid of each domestic heirloom onto her canvas, a stroke for every stitch. Unintimidated by their visual complexity, Sarkar says, “They are objects I want to run my eye over every inch of.” Her affinity for pattern could lead to tight renderings, but Sarkar’s compositions are sweeping and musical. She also paints flowers in states of bloom and decay. Alongside the textiles, they remind us that everything we pick to live with fades, unravels, and survives on distinct yet overlapping timelines.

Davis Arney curates allegorical scenes of domestic objects that do not necessarily belong to him. Sourced from stock imagery, advertisements, his memory, and photos he takes, Arney’s compositions question the construction of taste and desire, especially his own. Still life is arguably the most contrived genre because it’s easy to move objects into or out of the frame and control cultural context. For Arney, “self-presentation in the western world operates in a similar manner to the modes of display in historical still life painting, albeit more coded and often veiled by altruistic marketing.” His paintings strike a tricky balance of critique and diary, illusion and expression, and artifice and sincerity. 

Sarkar and Arney are remarkably attentive to texture, a material quality defined by physical feel. They transform oozy, pasty color into other tactile qualities: smooth and cold like a tabletop vase or the reflective glass of a bedside bong; dry and delicate like marigold petals or an unfurling roll of toilet paper; or woven and bumpy like the weave of a sari or sweater. In other words, their work is as much about adjectives as it is about nouns.

- Josephine Halvorson

Into The Fold will be on view from Friday, September 6 through Sunday, October 6, 2024. The gallery is located at 48 Hester Street in the Lower East Side. Gallery hours are Thursday-Sunday from 12-6pm and by appointment. For more information about this exhibition, please email info@mypetram.com.