Rina Banerjee at Perrotin
Rina Banerjee’s thrillingly offbeat exhibition is filled with maximalist sculptures, the biggest of which is Black Noodles (2023), which lends her Perrotin show its name. A large hanging structure with elements spilling onto the floor, it vaguely recalls a wrecked chandelier; its materials include a vintage milk glass, human hair, and an ostrich egg. It appears like a relic from a lost world, one entirely of Banerjee’s making.
If the other works in this show stand as proof, that world is one where humanity has forged an entirely different relationship to everything else around it. Hybridity is the name of the game here. Her painting I am not afraid of you said the Elephant to the Rodent (2022) features two figures, one resembling a long-legged person with a mouse’s face for a head, the other a crouching human with a long elephant’s trunk à la the Hindu deity Ganesha. They’re surrounded by oversize flowers and grass. Nature and animals, animals and humans, humans and gods press up against one another. Along the way, Banerjee, who was born in Kolkata, India, and is now based in New York, finds clever ways of blending cultures.
The dazzling Contagious Migrations (1999–2023) features as its background what appears to be a large plan for a city, with numbers and boxes denoting various structures. The plan isn’t particularly legible, however, and if it does map anything at all, it may be all the places Banerjee has been—the work includes Silly Putty, a toy now manufactured by the Western company Crayola, as well as turmeric and kumkum, substances that are pervasive in India. A similar work to this one figured in the Whitney Biennial more than 20 years ago, and amazingly, since then, Banerjee has had only a couple New York solo shows. This Perrotin show ought to bring her greater attention here—and hopefully lead to the mid-career survey she deserves.
