Toba Khedoori

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new and recent work by Toba Khedoori at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location in New York. Following the artist’s extensive survey at the Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, in 2021–2022, this exhibition features the major works that Khedoori has made since 2019.

Khedoori was one of the first artists to exhibit with David Zwirner, in 1994, the year after the gallery opened on Greene Street in New York; this is her seventh solo exhibition with the gallery and her first in New York since 2012.

Image: Installation view, Toba Khedoori, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

Location

537 West 20th Street New York New York, 10011

Dates

September 14—October 21, 2023

Opening Reception

Thursday, September 14, 6–8 PM

Gallery Hours

Tues—Sat 10am–6pm

Artist

Toba Khedoori

Press Release

Toba Khedoori

Toba Khedoori working on Untitled (doors) (1995) in her Los Angeles studio, 1995. Photo by Rachel Khedoori

“It is not just the drawing that is a constituent part of Khedoori’s art, but also the motifs themselves. As unexpected as they are, their choice is deliberate. The fence, the grid, the rope or undergrowth—all are somehow penetrable, susceptible to disorder, change, and what we project onto them.”

—Theodora Vischer, chief curator, Fondation Beyeler

Toba Khedoori

Untitled, 2021-2022

Oil, graphite, and wax on paper

137 1/8 x 285 1/2 inches (348.3 x 725.2 cm)

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Toba Khedoori, Untitled, 2021–2022 (detail)

Through a meticulous process that blends painting and drawing, Khedoori creates intricate, contemplative compositions depicting façades, plants, grids, windows, and doorways, among other subjects, that appear arrested in time and space.

Toba Khedoori

Untitled, 2023

Oil, graphite, and wax on paper

97 7/8 x 137 1/8 inches (248.6 x 348.3 cm)

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Toba Khedoori, Untitled, 2023

“With simple means, [Khedoori] dares us to look for the differences, and in the process she begs us to question the copy in a world where the idea that something cannot be reproduced has long ago vanished. What’s a copy? With slight variation or a massive structural change, Khedoori proves time and again the incredible range of the human hand and thus the human mind in the service of creativity.”

—Franklin Sirmans, director, Pérez Art Museum Miami

Installation view, Toba Khedoori, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

Toba Khedoori

Untitled, 2020-2021

Oil, graphite, and wax on paper

137 5/8 x 193 1/4 inches (349.6 x 490.9 cm)

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Toba Khedoori, Untitled, 2021 (detail)

The exhibition highlights two recent large-scale geometric grid works. A motif that Khedoori has returned to repeatedly over the course of her career, the grid—a foundational modernist construction intended to rid the picture plane of any narrative resonances—emphasizes the inherent play between figuration and abstraction within the artist’s oeuvre and calls into question the distinction between these two visual modalities.

Toba Khedoori

Untitled, 2020

Oil, graphite, and wax on paper

98 1/4 x 137 1/4 inches (249.6 x 348.6 cm)

Filip Engelen and Ann Gillis, Belgium

Toba Khedoori, Untitled, 2020 (detail)

“Rather than assert the individuality of a painterly style, Khedoori foregrounds the precision of her compositional decisions. Hers is an art of citation, not of collage. She does not recompose the fragments she extracts from the world. She simply holds them up to the light, so as to better illuminate the precise contour of their excision.”

—Julien Bismuth, artist and writer

Installation view, Toba Khedoori, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

Toba Khedoori

Untitled, 2023

Oil and graphite on canvas

27 1/2 x 24 1/2 inches (69.8 x 62.2 cm)

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“Because of the physical nature of the paper she uses and because she assembles several sheets of paper to construct her grounds, these works have a palpable and real dimensionality. The sheets curl up at the bottom and overlap each other slightly, casting small shadows where they meet and onto the wall behind.”

—Mark Godfrey, curator

Toba Khedoori

Untitled, 2022

Oil, graphite, and wax on paper in three (3) parts

137 1/8 x 275 1/4 inches (348.3 x 699.1 cm)

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Toba Khedoori, Untitled, 2022 (detail)

Several works in the exhibition feature branches, leaves, vines, or palm fronds that are grouped densely in some areas and sparsely in others. Khedoori equally prioritizes the leafy trees or twisted vines and the surrounding negative space, creating a perceptual push and pull between figure and ground.

Toba Khedoori

Untitled, 2019

Oil, graphite, and wax on paper

98 1/8 x 131 3/4 inches (249.2 x 334.6 cm)

Fredriksen Family Collection

Toba Khedoori

Untitled, 2019-2020

Oil, graphite, and wax on paper

98 x 86 1/4 inches (248.9 x 219.1 cm)

Private Collection, Switzerland

“Like Kafka’s staircases, Khedoori’s images are simply there, prompting unease in critics accustomed to searching for a deeper meaning. If we relinquish the urge to assign symbolism or hidden narratives to these images, we can attend to their meticulous construction and destabilizing effects.”

—Anna Lovatt, associate professor of art history, Southern Methodist University

Toba Khedoori

Untitled, 2020

Oil on canvas

27 7/8 x 63 1/2 inches (70.8 x 161.3 cm)

The Heiskell Family Collection

Further mediating these registers of the organic and the geometric in the exhibition is a small oil-on-canvas painting showing a fragmentary view of a succession of partially collapsed buildings. For this work—which was based on a photograph of war-torn eastern Ghouta in Syria—Khedoori inverted the tonal values of the source imagery, thus highlighting the interiors of the buildings.

Toba Khedoori, Untitled, 2020 (detail)

“Many of [Khedoori’s] compositions avoid easy legibility, with the result that the interaction of lines, structures, and colors comes to the fore. Regardless of their level of abstraction, these paintings exude an unusual strength—quiet yet remarkable—which in fact characterizes all of Khedoori's art.”

—Moritz Wesseler, director, Fridericianum

Installation view, Toba Khedoori, David Zwirner, New York, 2023

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