Manish Nai: In Search of Material Within Material
About Manish Nai
Manish Nai (b. 1980, Gujarat, India) received a Diploma in Drawing and Painting from the L.S. Raheja School of Art in Mumbai. Working with materials that are both modest and distinctly Indian—such as jute, newspaper, used clothes, old books, and found or rusted corrugated metal sheets—Nai compresses, reshapes and reconfigures them into sculptural and pictorial forms. His practice highlights transformation, where the material’s history and memory are preserved while its form becomes entirely new.
Nai has exhibited internationally at institutions including Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi; Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai; Para Site, Hong Kong; Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; NTU CCA, Singapore; Het Noordbrabants Museum, Netherlands; and the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago. He has participated in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014, 2018) and the Shanghai Biennale (2012).
His solo exhibitions include Richard Taittinger Gallery, New York; Galerie Karsten Greve, Paris and St. Moritz; Kavi Gupta, Chicago; Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai; and Nature Morte. In 2017, Fondation Fernet-Branca in Saint-Louis, France, presented a comprehensive exhibition of his paintings, murals, sculptures and photographs.
About Leila Heller Gallery
Since its establishment four decades ago, Leila Heller has gained worldwide recognition as a pioneer in promoting creative dialogue and exchange between Western artists and Middle Eastern, Central and Southeast Asian artists. In 2010, Leila Heller moved from the Upper East Side to its flagship space, Leila Heller Gallery, in Chelsea where it has garnered a reputation for identifying and cultivating the careers of artists leaving a lasting impact on contemporary art and culture.
In March of 2019, Leila Heller made her return to the Upper East Side after eight years. The New York space has since brought its focus back to the secondary market, and has hosted events such as Double Vision, curated by Jane Holzer and featuring works by Andy Warhol, Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, and Keith Haring, amongst others.
In 2015, Leila Heller opened the Leila Heller Gallery in Dubai, its first international location in Dubai’s Alserkal Avenue. At 16,500 square feet and 32-foot ceilings, it is a state-of-the-art gallery that features three exhibition spaces, making it the largest gallery in the Middle East. Showcasing leading regional and international artists, many of whom will be presenting their work in the Middle East for the first time, the gallery is dedicated to supporting the evolving practice of established artists. The gallery has strong innovative curatorial and educational programs with an emphasis on promoting a dialogue between Western and Middle Eastern artists.
In addition to presenting a dynamic exhibition schedule, Leila Heller Gallery actively organizes shows with world-renowned curators, hosts educational panels and film screenings, and produces catalogues and books with scholarly essays. Each year the gallery participates in major international art fairs and stages off-site projects as a platform for exploring new conversations within a wider context of galleries, artists and institutions. Gallery artists have consistently participated in international museum exhibitions and biennials, and are included in leading institutional collections worldwide.