Firm ground in a vanishing landscape

Brave Singh embraces the violence of oblivion in Temporary Landscapes.

Written by Chesca Santiago
November 15, 2023

Seven portals constitute the largest exhibition area of Blanc Gallery for Brave Singh’s solo show.

There is violence in the way Brave Singh makes a landscape disappear. In Temporary Landscapes, his latest exhibition at Blanc Gallery, we come face to face with canvases that each hold a portal towards vistas in various states of decay. Terrains that crumple and corrode into oblivion, into fragments that crumble bit by bit. 

Across the exhibition space, there is no apparent progression in narrative as one moves from canvas to canvas. Rather, the same procedure and intention are repeated on each work—an operation executed by Singh through his command of element and material. The first maneuver involves space. A play with edges, bounds, and perimeters by way of the frame. In this series, the frame does not go outside the canvas. It does not line a painting’s perimeter, nor does it trace the peripheries of an artwork. Instead, it finds itself in the middle of the canvas, distinguishing between two landscapes—one inside the frame, the other outside of it. Put simply, a portal.

Here is where the frame becomes part and center of the narrative. It no longer merely sets the boundaries between two locales but becomes a site right on its own, too. And it is through this that Singh exercises the procedure of deterioration. On the frame’s fringes, wood and pumice are masterfully cut, crumpled, and colored into disintegrating fragments of the painted landscape. Deterioration, then, is translated across different planes. We witness the landscape attempting to reach beyond its bounds. To spill outwards only to find itself closing and crumbling into its own. The way Singh is able to capture collapse with the right maneuver of the right materials merits praise.

Singh demonstrates a complex maneuver with wood, frame, and pumice.

The artist further complicates the narrative by way of light. For the sections of the canvas outside the frame, Singh’s palette points somber. Yet the landscape inside betrays the slightest traces of light wrestling with the looming dark. Perhaps dusk, perhaps dawn. The deteriorating landscape is revealed as a scene of struggle as well. But the resistance is cast as futile for the outcome has been set. Reading the exhibition notes, the landscapes are revealed as places of respite. Frames as portals to what Singh describes as an “escape from reality.” Towards the end, however, is an admission of the temporariness of these escapes. In a few moments, what little light that remains will be consumed by the impending darkness that envelops the frame. What is final is that the landscape will disappear. Violently, inevitably. 

The landscape within the frame shows the last vestiges of light on the verge of collapse.

An air of pessimism prevails over the exhibition’s visual and conceptual cues. In the midst of the exhibition space, we are surrounded by seven canvases that tell of corrosion in different degrees. Akin to seven portals firm on sucking us into these landscapes of decay. This decision to embrace destruction and defeat stands out in today’s exhibition-making landscape, where it seems as if the dominant tendency involves squeezing hope into the narrative no matter how forced or misplaced it may be. Perhaps an attempt to make their intentions palatable to an audience who would rather relish rose-colored canvases—the exact ruse rejected by the artist. In the midst of temporary landscapes, Singh is able to hold his ground firm.

Temporary Landscapes is on view at Blanc Gallery until November 4, 2023.