Gallery Wendi Norris
Skip to main content
  • Menu
  • Artists
  • Exhibitions
  • Art Fairs
  • News
  • Video
  • Publications
  • Contact
Cart
0 items $
Checkout

Item added to cart

View cart & checkout
Continue shopping
Menu
Chitra Ganesh | Tiger in the Looking Glass
September 13 - October 26, 2024
  • Current
  • Upcoming
  • Past

Chitra Ganesh | Tiger in the Looking Glass

Past exhibition
  • Overview
  • Installation Views
  • Works
  • News
Overview
Installation view, "Tiger in the Looking Glass," Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, CA, 2024. Photo by Scott Saraceno.
Installation view, "Tiger in the Looking Glass," Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, CA, 2024. Photo by Scott Saraceno.
 

Gallery Wendi Norris presents Tiger in the Looking Glass, an exhibition of new paintings by Chitra Ganesh (b. 1975 Brooklyn, New York, USA). One of the most preeminent contemporary artists of her generation, Ganesh opens her fifth solo presentation with the gallery. In this body of work, Ganesh expands upon an iconography that she has been building for more than twenty years, taking it in a lush direction of otherworldly, surreal landscapes. The exhibition takes its title from the motifs and Surrealist themes that weave through Ganesh’s work, such as hybridity, portals and mirrors, double consciousness, multiverses, and femme shapeshifters. 

Drawing and painting form the core of Ganesh’s multi-disciplinary practice, which is rooted in literature, semiotics, queer theory, and historical texts as well as popular and graphic vernaculars like Keith Haring’s subway drawings in New York and hand painted Bollywood posters in India. Exemplified in Tiger in the Looking Glass, Ganesh takes cues from the graphic language of comics and science fiction and interweaves it with Surrealism,  mythological iconography to empower her queer and femme subjects, representations of whom are largely absent from artistic and literary Eurocentric canons. In this exhibition, Ganesh renders the familiar unfamiliar against dense and bountiful environments that evoke the foliage in Rajasthani and Pahari miniature paintings or Henri Rousseau’s jungles. The hybrid figure in the large-scale Enter the Jungle (2024), which inspired the exhibition title, is shown entering a new world without disturbing the harmony of their environment. Interconnectedness and dissonance coexist as Ganesh addresses the world’s need to regenerate and paints a vision of possibility and abundance. This harmony continues in the inky-hued Pond Walk (2024), an inverted version of the lush worlds depicted in the other paintings where a stag and its rider emerge from the ground in glowing, psychedelic silhouettes. The stag stares back at the viewer, as if through an opening or portal. 

 

Ganesh’s coming of age in the mid-to-late ‘90s in New York around progressive South Asian and queer and trans people of color has deeply influenced her mode of thinking. Her visual grammar forms its own queer vernacular, richly layering and stitching together seemingly disparate styles, creating nontraditional mixed media works that exist in between painting and drawing. This approach informs Alien Abduction (2024) which depicts a superhero-like figure being abducted and transported out of a verdant landscape into a gendered paradigm, as a human-monkey hybrid figure watches with unease. 

Tiger in the Looking Glass opens at a time of heightened global critical recognition for the artist. In 2024 Ganesh was featured in the Sydney Biennale and will be included in the Bangkok Biennale opening in October. Her first comprehensive monograph was recently published by Distanz, featuring essays by leading curators and scholars Natasha Bissonauth, Gayatri Gopinath, Saisha Grayson, Tausif Noor, Svati Shah, and Ksenia Soboleva, and a foreword by Jasmine Wahi. The San Jose Museum of Art named Ganesh an honoree at its 2024 gala in recognition of her storied career. In New York this summer, Ganesh opens dual major multi-disciplinary public commissions for Art at Amtrak at Penn Station and Moynihan Train Hall and is the first artist to take over both transit hubs. 

Share
  • Facebook
  • X
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Email
Installation Views
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Installation view, Tiger in the Looking Glass, Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, CA, 2024. Photo by Scott Saraceno.
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Installation view, Tiger in the Looking Glass, Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, CA, 2024. Photo by Scott Saraceno.
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Installation view, Tiger in the Looking Glass, Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, CA, 2024. Photo by Scott Saraceno.
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Installation view, Tiger in the Looking Glass, Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, CA, 2024. Photo by Scott Saraceno.
Installation view, Tiger in the Looking Glass, Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco, CA, 2024. Photo by Scott Saraceno.
Works
  • Chitra Ganesh, Enter the Jungle, 2024, watercolor, acrylic, gouache, ink, glass, and acrylic paper on paper mounted on linen, 45 1/2 x 60 inches (115.57 x 152.4 cm). Credit of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.
    Chitra Ganesh, Enter the Jungle, 2024, watercolor, acrylic, gouache, ink, glass, and acrylic paper on paper mounted on linen, 45 1/2 x 60 inches (115.57 x 152.4 cm). Credit of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco. 
  • Chitra Ganesh, Tiger In the Looking Glass, 2024, acrylic, ink, glass, and textile on wood panel, 30 x 40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm). Credit of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.
    Chitra Ganesh, Tiger In the Looking Glass, 2024, acrylic, ink, glass, and textile on wood panel, 30 x 40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm). Credit of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco. 
  • Chitra Ganesh, Alien Abduction, 2024, watercolor, gouache, and acrylic on paper mounted on linen, 29 3/4 x 20 3/4 inches (75.57 x 52.71 cm). Credit of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.
    Chitra Ganesh, Alien Abduction, 2024, watercolor, gouache, and acrylic on paper mounted on linen, 29 3/4 x 20 3/4 inches (75.57 x 52.71 cm). Credit of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.
  • Chitra Ganesh, Pigeon Escape, 2024, acrylic, gouache, textile, synthetic hair, and vintage jewelry on paper mounted on linen, 30 x 40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm). Credit of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.
    Chitra Ganesh, Pigeon Escape, 2024, acrylic, gouache, textile, synthetic hair, and vintage jewelry on paper mounted on linen, 30 x 40 inches (76.2 x 101.6 cm). Credit of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco. 
  • Chitra Ganesh, Roller Disco, 2024, acrylic, ink, gouache, chalk, textile, sand, brass hardware, and embroidery on paper mounted on linen, 60 x 40 inches (152.4 x 101.6 cm). Credit of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.
    Chitra Ganesh, Roller Disco, 2024, acrylic, ink, gouache, chalk, textile, sand, brass hardware, and embroidery on paper mounted on linen, 60 x 40 inches (152.4 x 101.6 cm). Credit of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco. 
  • Chitra Ganesh, Pond Walk, 2024, acrylic, ink, mirror, sequins, and sand on paper, 18 x 12 inches (45.72 x 30.48 cm). Credit of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.
    Chitra Ganesh, Pond Walk, 2024, acrylic, ink, mirror, sequins, and sand on paper, 18 x 12 inches (45.72 x 30.48 cm). Credit of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco. 
News
  • Hyperallergic | The Feminist Multiverse of Chitra Ganesh’s Art

    Hyperallergic | The Feminist Multiverse of Chitra Ganesh’s Art

    There are boundless ways to interpret the artist’s works, each populated with fierce femmes and curious chimera, and layered with symbols. October 14, 2024
    By Julie Schneider 14 October 2024 SAN FRANCISCO — Hot pink paint, like the tropical flash of a wild bougainvillea vine, radiates from the walls...
    Read more
  • The Brooklyn Rail | Chitra Ganesh: Tiger in the Looking Glass

    The Brooklyn Rail | Chitra Ganesh: Tiger in the Looking Glass

    October 8, 2024
    By Danica Sachs October, 2024 A hybrid beast, a woman with a cat-like tail and tiger’s head, clad in a magenta jumpsuit, is poised on...
    Read more
  • Asian Art Newspaper | Tiger in the Looking Glass

    Asian Art Newspaper | Tiger in the Looking Glass

    Gallery Shows October 1, 2024
    Olivia Sand October 2024 From the early stages of her artistic career, Chitra Ganesh (b 1975) has always seen herself as an activist, bringing exposure...
    Read more

Related artist

  • Chitra Ganesh

    Chitra Ganesh

Back to Past exhibitions

436 JACKSON STREET 
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94111

TUESDAY - SATURDAY
11AM - 6PM

415.346.7812

info@gallerywendinorris.com

ADAA Logo

JOIN OUR MAILING LIST

Join the mailing list
Instagram, opens in a new tab.
Youtube, opens in a new tab.
Facebook, opens in a new tab.
Manage cookies
Copyright © 2025 Gallery Wendi Norris
Site by Artlogic

This website uses cookies
This site uses cookies to help make it more useful to you. Please contact us to find out more about our Cookie Policy.

Manage cookies
Accept

Cookie preferences

Check the boxes for the cookie categories you allow our site to use

Cookie options
Required for the website to function and cannot be disabled.
Improve your experience on the website by storing choices you make about how it should function.
Allow us to collect anonymous usage data in order to improve the experience on our website.
Allow us to identify our visitors so that we can offer personalised, targeted marketing.
Save preferences