Evidence of
The Nervous
System
Pain and Pleasure
The first slash. The canvas was grey and the red refused to stay contained. Every mark is a record of resistance — the scratching, the stippling, the vertical drag. This is what a breakdown looks like when it decides to become architecture.
Explosion
The colour nor the paper stays at one place just like a description refuses to settle here.
Figures in a Vibrant Procession
The city as a nervous system. Faces overlapping, bodies dissolving into colour fields — cyan, ochre, pink. Every figure is mid-sentence. The painting refuses to give any one of them priority.
Is it okay?
Two people accidentally ripping each other's heart in an attempt to fix their own heart.
Scarlet Monster Haul
Figures and animals — inseparable. The human and the bovine folded together in warm reds and golds. The crowd has no clear edges. Everyone is inside someone else's body here.
Parasol Party Poopers
Their story hides behind the umbrellas waiting to be revealed when the time is here.
Speed Race
Purple horses under a red sun. Nothing is chasing them — the running is the point. Speed as a way of feeling alive without needing a reason. A metaphor for a chaotic internal struggle.
"The canvas is the only place where the noise makes sense."
— Maanya Patel, Studio Notes 2024
The
Detriment
The only clues are the words neurological, passion, wrestling and chemical imbalance.
Spikes Unknown
when unknown feels somewhat known. Something, somewhere...it senses the unknown
Poured (Pair)
Fluid acrylic on board · diptych · Two surfaces that caught the same moment of pouring. The fluid remembers its movement even after it dries.
Additional small works available on request
(Modified Version)
If you know you know. Sometimes stories are yet to be revealed to the public
Snow
If you know you know. Sometimes stories are yet to be revealed to the public
"I didn't set out to make a sculpture about grief. But grief is what made it."
The Meridian series comprises two related works: the contained vessel (S.01) and the extracted organ (S.01b), intended to be exhibited together.
The body pinned in place — flesh-pink, malformed and irregular, the safety pin running through it like a clinical intervention. Three photographs, three ways of holding it. The safety pin is the thing that was supposed to keep something together.
A clash amongst desire drive movement control vision. A presentation of internal damage.
Brain strangled. Thoughts mangled. Each word is like a tug asking who is in control.
"The texture is the record of the resistance."
— Maanya Patel, Studio Notes 2024
"I don't paint things. I paint the vibration of things. If you can see the bone, you're looking at the wrong part. Look at the space between the joint where the ache lives."
"The grid is a lie we tell ourselves to feel safe. I use the grid only to show you how easily it breaks. Basquiat knew this. The lines are cages. Break the cage."