Born and raised in Bangalore, India, where she still works, Prabhavathi Meppayil, the daughter of a goldsmith, revisits the problematics and motifs of modernism/minimalism via traditional artisanal practices and techniques. Her paintings in lime gesso inscribed with gold and copper wire, or marked and patterned with goldsmith’s tools, most notably thinnam, interrogate such minimalist trademarks as the grid, monochromy, and serial repetition. In the process, she inflects impersonal minimalist formulas with a human, sensual dimension in keeping with a general shift in contemporary art in this direction.

Meppayil rose to international prominence this past year as one of the stand-outs of Massimiliano Gioni’s exhibition The Encyclopedic Palace at the Venice Biennale, which enshrined so-called outsider artists. Little known outside of India until recently, her paintings put a much needed and subtly evocative emphasis on materials, work implements and artistic process. Her first solo exhibition in Italy, it is a collaboration with PACE London. The handsomely illustrated catalogue will feature a major essay by the noted critic Benjamin Buchloh and a text by the art historian Deepak Ananth.

The exhibition is open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 4pm to 7pm until 11 May 2014.

The exhibition is supported, in part, by a generous contribution from Melos International.