MATRIX 286 by Amol K Patil: A Forest of Remembrance

A Forest of Remembrance, Patil’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States, presents an installation of newly commissioned paintings and sculptures. The walls of the gallery have been coated in layers of blue and yellow hues, textured and weathered to mimic the layers of paint in the chawls. Within this mise-en-scène, small-scale paintings offer windows into intimate interiors, while the platforms that punctuate the space recall the makeshift stage sets on which his father and other theater activists often performed. The sculptures—modeled in clay and then cast in bronze—give shape to the people who have for generations occupied the chawls, their defiant hands and feet extending from their collective bodies in dynamic protest.