Elastic Time

ps122 Gallery

LYNN CAZABON & PRADEEP DALAL

March 3 – 25, 2007

Reception: March 3, 5-7 pm

Gallery Hours: Thursday – Sunday, 12-6 pm

150 First Avenue, NYC 10009 (enter on 9th St. between First Ave. and Ave. A) T: 212.228.4249 / ps122 Gallery

PRADEEP DALAL Elastic Time: Photomontages.

In two photomontage series, Pradeep Dalal examines autobiographical and architectural sites in India and explores his sense of legacy with each. In the series Chowpatty he considers the sweeping horseshoe bay of his native city Mumbai (Bombay), appropriating a 19th century panorama as a baseline from which to build a splintered collage of images of churning seascapes and scraggly palm trees. In the series Bidar he depicts the exquisite geometric order of domes, arches, spaces, and intricate ornamentation of a 15th century fort near the city of Hyderabad. In the Bidar montages, he tethers the stolid documentation of textbook-style architectural views to more spontaneous, snapshot-like images made recently. In visiting Bidar, he questions his narrow attitude as a young architecture student of the 1980's, when pre-modern sites like the fort at Bidar hardly interested him, preoccupied as he was by modern architecture.

In all his work, Dalal reappraises his earlier assumptions, creating a sense of critical memoir by using a variety of photo genres, multiple moments, time periods, and a range of textures within the frame of a single montaged image.

Dalal was born in Mumbai and now lives in New York. He has an MFA from the ICP/Bard program in Advanced Photographic Studies and an MArch from MIT. He exhibited in New York recently at Orchard, the International Center of Photography, The New York Public Library, and at TART in San Francisco and Gallery 42 at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. He has an upcoming exhibition at the Miami-Dade County Public Library in May. Last year he received the Tierney Grant for emerging photographers.