Known for highly dimensional, often deeply colored work, with this new show Prajakti Jayavant takes a leap. Pushing herself to achieve form from paint, and feeling from mark, these pieces lie tighter to the plane of wall, ceiling or floor- defining their territory with quiet force.

Looked at from afar, Jayavant’s art appears solid, grounded, known. On closer inspection subtle gradations in color, treatment, and line add liquidity to the sculptural forms. Layered with pigment reflecting back emotion, more than light, these dark empathic pieces coax minimalism towards sensuality.

Jayavant counts among her influences Martin, Ryman, Fontana, Tuttle, Twombly and Hesse. Reviewing an earlier solo show, Kenneth Baker wrote, “Jayavant can marshal…a range of references: to Richard Tuttle’s early canvas pieces, to the scrap metal vocabulary of the late John Chamberlain, the punning Africa-map/ elephant-ear forms of David Ireland, perhaps even to certain early folded sculptures of David Rabinowitch.”

It is by placing herself squarely in this lineage that she is able to limn the lines between the cerebral, the process oriented, formalism, and craft to carve out a trajectory all her own.

Sometimes taking years to complete, each piece documents a long and deepening understanding of the narrow parameters in which she chooses to explore. Indefatigable, Jayavant keeps going until history, thought, and emotion work together to push the piece into the world. Existing on its own- both apart from, and within, all it contains.

Copyright Tracy Wheeler 2015