Maanik Singh Chauhan: Here and There
Tyler Gallery, Elkins Park
18 -23 April, 2005

Tyler Gallery, Elkins Park at Tyler School of Art will feature an exhibition of drawings and paintings by Maanik Singh Chauhan from April 19th through April 23rd, 2005. A reception will be held on Saturday, April 23rd from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm.

With a starting scheme of orange, the color calming and the memory of the 1984 invasion of the Golden Temple still lingering, the weight of divergent cultures are laid out. Maanik Singh Chauhan's work is of the conflict of two worlds his Sikh upbringing and the vastness of the Midwest, that gateway that seems to forever remain closed to hungers for distance and escape. The rolling southern Ohio hills with their inherent darkness, abandoned factories, rust eaten pick-ups bordered by the mountains of Kentucky and stories of bootleggers rumbling through the dusk juxtaposed with turbaned youth on basketball courts and American dreams. The divergent cultures of these two worlds is what makes his paintings so distinct, there is an air of internal conflict within them. Unwittingly or not he has made his figures stand out from the paintings, seeming never at ease in their surroundings, the softness of the turbans not mirrored in the hard angles of the three and four bedroom homes. There is no sense of ease to Chauhan's work, there seems to be evidence of struggle in the simplicity of the backgrounds compared to the tenderness with which he paints his figures. The paintings of himself and his brother, riding bicycles, playing basketball, against the backdrop of suburban Cincinnati, their turbans and knots in stark contrast to the manicured lawns and two car garages. Not quite willing to be a voice for the Sikh in America, it seems he has in fact stumbled into the role, Air Jordans and all, an unwitting participant in the cultural dialogue of assimilation.

Maanik Singh Chauhan receives his MFA in Painting from Tyler School of Art in May 2005. He received his BFA from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio in 2000. He is a recipient of a 2000 Robert and Marion Gatrell Award, an Edith Fergus-Gillmore Award, and a Centennial Foundation Award in 2004.