From the street to the street-art gallery, Aakash Nihalani’s art remains accessible. — Photos by Mimi Luse unless otherwise attributed.Artists who work on walls and sidewalks (ok, call them street artists) cultivate a kind of mysterious notoriety due to the double fact that they are anonymous yet ubiquitous. You can’t seek them out, but you’ll turn a corner, and they’ll spontaneously appear in your life again. If you’re not a fan, it can be assaulting (I have love/hate for this guy) but if you like the work, it will bring you luck as you start to mentally collect sightings.
In 2006, when I first noticed the fluorescent and reflective tape works of the Bushwick-based Aakash Nihalani, they were some of the most original pieces of street art I’d seen in a while. Since then, Nihalani has also dabbled in the gallery setting, and this Friday his third gallery show, ”Tape and Mirrors,” opens at Eastern District (Ad Hoc Art is co-hosting). BushwickBK snuck a peek at the show while Nihalani was installing, and was then invited to see the artist’s studio, where we found Nihalani’s secret tape stash.
Considering that street art is often unauthorized, I was surprised when Nihalani showed up for our interview flouting the bandana-over-the-face, fly-by-night stereotype of a grafitti artist. Genial and outgoing, his face exposed save for a five o’ clock shadow, Nihalani explained he had nothing to hide from: "I use my real name and I work during the day." The tape pieces for which he is known are the opposite of destructive. First, they are done with commercial tape that can be easily peeled off — "I try to stray away from the aggressive permanent mark-making" — but secondly, more than just a tag, Nihalani’s isometric cubes are site-specific works that create optical illusions on the subway walls and sidewalks to which they are taped. With only a few lines, he makes playful and surreal alterations to the stacked cubes of our urban landscape.
For example, in a photo called Stares, on his website, Nihalani has taped lines from the side-plane of a staircase, making isometric rectangles that project the appearance of a second set of stairs. The photo shows two neighborhood children eyeing the virtual addition. In another photo, Brick Layer, Nihalani has blacked out a concrete brick on a low wall, then re-constructed it on the sidewalk as an isometric projection in bright yellow tape.
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Nihalani’s cubes have a superficial connection to the minimalist conceptual artist Sol Lewitt, who deals with the infinite possibilities inherent in the most basic of shapes, but Nihalani’s work has a different tact in his extreme encroachment on the day-to-day practice of a non-gallery-going public. These public installations started three years ago while he was still in school, at NYU. He had been experimenting with silkscreening (many of his earlier works also include three-dimensional cubes and rectangles) and he was asked to participate in a print and sculpture show for a student exhibit. "I noticed in the gallery that this sculpture pedestal was casting this isometric rectangle, and I had this tape because I was hanging prints on the wall, so I outlined the shadow in tape, not thinking anything of it. But a teacher mentioned it, and I ended up with more tape and I did a piece on the sidewalk."
Having started school as a Poli-Sci major but later on switching to fine art, Nihalani still felt compelled to engage with the public in a meaningful way, but without going through the motions of bureaucracy. He started taping Lower Manhattan on a regular basis.
"For 6-8 months I started hitting the street every day or every other day," he said. "For months I was worried it was being done in a void, but after a while people on the street started saying, ‘You’re that guy’ and thanking me. I needed something immediate and I can say something immediate with this. If it’s relatable people are more inclined to care."
Nihalani’s impulse to engage the public in his art extends to the most public of mediums, the internet, and it’s no surprise that the artist, who is also a whiz web designer, has started a beta site devoted to interactive play. But if accessibility is his thing, how does Nihalani feel about showing within the confines of a white-wall gallery?
"I could never do this [project] if not in a gallery. I get to talk to art history through the gallery."
True enough, instead of watering it down, the space and time offered in a gallery allows a different kind of work to emerge. At Eastern District this week, Nihalani takes full advantage of all four walls to employ mirrors across from and within his works. As the exhibit’s title is a play on "smoke and mirrors," Nihalani’s pieces are a subterfuge to confound our senses. For example, in the installation, the profile of a wooden bench wrapped in green tape completes an isometric cube in the mirror on the opposite wall. Sitting on the bench and looking into the mirror, you are suddenly "inside" the cube.
"The isometric is in dialogue with the space; it’s a two dimensional representation that speaks about a three-dimensional form. The mirror, on the other hand, flattens a three-dimensional form into a two-dimensional representation," Nihalani explains.
In other words, "If it’s successful, people wont be checking their makeup."
See more of Nihalani on his site. "Tape and Mirrors" runs September 25th – October 25th at Eastern District.
Eastern District
43 Bogart Street
Opening Reception: September 25th, 7-10pm
