Antonio Puri is set for his second solo exhibition at Twelve Gates Arts, this coming month. The show will contain recent mixed-media works, including those from his Chandigarh series about his hometown in north India. Through his use of monotonous color, Puri evokes the concrete building materials prevalent in the town, which was planned and designed by Le Corbusier - the effect successfully communicates the type of subconcious suggestion of identity that Puri has stated he investigates and would like to challenge along with his viewers through his work.
In these large-scale paintings and others, Puri plays with the notion of abstraction, emphasizing, as Maiza Laurent Hixson of the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art puts it, "constant shifts in perspective, from being extremely close to very far away," which allows, "The distance from 'home' in Puri's painting [to] be perceived as physical and emotional." He continues an investigation into identity and roots, however severed, with his Inner Home series. Antonio Puri is a Philadelphia-based artist who has previously shown work at 12G in November/December 2012 and is also currently showing work at the Delaware Art Museum from April 11 through August 2, 2015. After growing up in north India, he attended the Academy of Art in San Francisco and Coe College in Iowa for a bachelors degree in Art and later a JD degree from the University of Iowa.
He has exhibited his work in solo exhibitions all over the world including Art Depot, Austria, The Guild, NY, Loft gallery, India, Nu Art Gallery, Santa Fe, Philadelphia Art Alliance, and a two person show at the Noyes Museum, NJ. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions worldwide including venues like Essl Museum, Austria, Hammond Museum, NY, Queens Museum, NY, Gallery Espace, New Delhi, Edsviks Konsthall, Stockholm, MOP Gallery, Sydney, Musee du Chateau, France, Corcoran Gallery in DC, and Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN, among others. Museum collections include National Gallery of Modern Art, Mauritius, Noyes Museum, NJ, Essl Museum, Austria, Musee du Chateau, France, and Bergen Museum of Art and Science, NJ. Puri's work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Indian Express, Art das Kunstmagazin, among several other periodicals. He has done residencies in Hungary, Bulgaria, South Africa, Serbia, Mauritius, India, Denmark, and Romania.