Toba Khedoori

Architectural elements and space coalesce in Toba Khedoori’s large-scale paintings, creating a palpable tension between depicted object and surrounding paper. Though the expansive sheets of paper, some as large as 11 by 20 feet, possess the majority of the wall, the viewer is still forced to approach the paintings in order to decipher the subtle and repetitious images placed onto the surface. This engulfing largeness of the foreground in relation to the intimacy of the forms creates a compelling and refreshing approach to systematic abstraction.

Khedoori, a native Australian now residing in Los Angeles and graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, has recently attracted attention from art critics and curators for her unusual but accessible style.  Collier Schorr, essayist for the exhibition catalogue, described the source of intrigue in Khedoori’s work: “Her inconstant use of perspective and scale makes these paintings jump apart like the impossible union of like ends of a magnet. Here, the tension is on the momentary suspension of things falling apart.”

Born in 1964 in Sydney, Khedoori received her BFA in 1988 from the San Francisco Art Institute and studied at the Skowhegan School in Maine. She earned her MFA from UCLA in 1994.