The Shape of Space I Art.iculate Studio I Lahore, Pakistan
2026
Curated by Niyash Mistry I Robella Ahmed I Art Manzil
Curatorial Note– The Shape of Space is an exercise in the subjectivity of perception. The artists in this exhibition present a kind of self-knowing that emerges from encountering the spaces that define us — the homes we live in, the people in whose company we exist, and the collective memory we carry that allows us to envision futures. We are relational beings who take shape in juxtaposition to our surroundings. Regimes of identity inscribe themselves onto our bodies, turning us into sites where reality itself is continually negotiated. Equally, the spaces we inhabit are constructed in our minds, brought into existence by our perception. To truly inhabit our environs, then, is to participate in their making and meaning.
The artists here are keen observationalists and this has myriad consequences. Some contend with human touch in the most delicate and sensitive of ways, reimagining skin as barrier and bone as scaffolding to frame the body as its own architectural structure. Some formulate possibilities both mythological and fantastical, resisting societal expectation and invoking realities that could be. Others find new truths in the abstract, deploying kineticism to unsettle architecture’s claims to neutrality and permanence. Here, artists vividly depict the way light bends around a pillar, shadows cast meaning into the corners of a room, or brutalist concrete structures yield to recasting as traditional textiles of Sindh and Gujarat. Many are skeptical of the truths we tell ourselves and make naked the absurd that disguises itself as necessity.
We seek to shine a light on the edges of the amorphous, to feel out what this place is and what it contains. This is an invitation to daydream. To let your mind wander over the crevices and into the slipstreams of imagination. To feel and respond to the abstracted spaces, forms and emotions conjuring here.
A Note on the works in the exhibition by Niyash Mistry– Parul Gupta often oscillates between scientific and perceptual realities. She says, “These two ways of knowing don’t always line up, but they both feel real.” Her work, at the intersection of art and architecture, takes an expanded view of drawing — site-conditioned interventions, drawings in space, sculptures, kinetic installations, and photographs. She is an architectural phenomenologist, highlighting the subjective in architecture to disturb notions of permanence, capture movement of light and structure, and demonstrate how our bodies are in endless dialogue with our buildings.
Her photography, exhibited in this exhibition, may be seen as reference points for further creative exploration. Here, light and shadow create perceptions of form. Gupta exploits elements of structural juxtaposition such as oblique and vertical movement, long and short perspectives, open and closed space, and light and darkness, to create striking compositions. Here, the abstraction is slight, providing a sense of spacelessness where gravity gives way and everything is in the air, fluid and passing by.
Alongside these, the exhibition includes five works from her paper and pastel meditations. These are subtle and delicate renderings that read like a spectral imprint of gravitational lensing. Entirely made by hand, these works are a beautifully constructed exercise in tactility, simultaneously certain and ephemeral.
Also in the exhibition are two stunning works from Gupta’s Notes on Movement series. These cyanotype compositions, each formed by tessellating six individually-composed prints. The works are abstracted and imagined blueprints of the parallax effect, a concept that fascinates the artist. Starting with a form like a pillar or column, Gupta imagines the shifting nature of the structure as our body moves in the space around it. These highly energetic and conceptually brilliant works remain simultaneously quiet and gentle, bringing our attention to the kineticism of rigid structure and of our own conceptions and perceptions of permanence. Gupta is a highly-acclaimed multidisciplinary artist whose work is in the collections of numerous international private museum collections, including Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Devi Art Foundation, Eight Foundation, and Sovereign Asian Art Foundation.
