Los Angeles—The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is pleased to announce Toba Khedoori (September 25, 2016–March 19, 2017), a major museum survey of Khedoori’s oeuvre over the past 22 years. The exhibition presents the artist’s more recent oil-on-canvas paintings alongside her earlier large-scale works on paper, demonstrating the impressive arc of her artistic production over the past two decades. The exhibition includes more than 25 works and is curated by Franklin Sirmans, Director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) and formerly the Terri and Michael Smooke Curator and Department Head of contemporary art at LACMA, with Christine Y. Kim, associate curator of contemporary art at LACMA. Following its run at LACMA, Toba Khedoori will be on view at PAMM from April 20–September 24, 2017.
Toba Khedoori has lived and worked in Los Angeles since 1990. Her early works are notable for their precise draftsmanship and for their use of negative space—often at a very large scale. Khedoori frequently depicts architectural forms from distanced perspectives, rendering commonplace objects and spaces familiar yet decontextualized. In recent years, she has transitioned from paper to canvas, producing smaller scale works that hover between representation and abstraction. Like her earlier compositions, these works are enigmatic and acutely detailed; in an art world awash with rapidly moving images and saturated colors, Khedoori remains committed to the silent, slow, and exacting process of working by hand.
Sirmans said, “Toba Khedoori elevates the experience of the commonplace by treating ordinary objects and bits and pieces of nature as if they were precious baubles. Her attention to detail, her surrealist wit, and her appreciation for the magic of the everyday remind us to take stock of what surrounds us.”
“Looking at this survey of Khedoori’s work in the context of recent exhibitions at LACMA, one can see a focus emerging that is indicative of a changing world of art,” said Michael Govan, LACMA’s CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “Considering the show alongside monographic exhibitions of Agnes Martin, Diana Thater, and Helen Pashgian as well as the long-term installation of Maria Nordman’s YANG-NA, it is clear that there is rapidly growing recognition of the work of women artists. In addition, the exhibition extends LACMA’s efforts to trace the recent history of art in Southern California, which includes Thater and Pashgian, as well as John Altoon, Asco, Edward Kienholz, Ken Price, Noah Purifoy, and James Turrell.”
About Toba Khedoori:
Toba Khedoori was born in Sydney, Australia in 1964. She received her BA from the San Francisco Art Institute (1988) and her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles (1994).
Her work has been the subject of solo museum exhibitions worldwide, including the Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis (2003); Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2002); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2001); Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2001); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (1997); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1997).
Khedoori was the recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1994) and a MacArthur Foundation Grant (2002). Curators have included her in numerous international group exhibitions such as the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009); 2nd Seville Biennal (2006); Liverpool Biennial (2006); 26th São Paulo Biennial (2004); and the Whitney Biennial (1995).
