SAN FRANCISCO, CA (September 20, 2023) – Jessica Silverman is pleased to announce the representation of Oakland-based artist Rupy C. Tut. Tut’s artistic practice expands, innovates, and reframes the traditions of Indian miniature painting. She mixes her own pigments and turns to hemp paper and linen to contend and make visible one’s place in the world. On September 23, the artist will be the subject of the solo exhibition Out of Place at the Institute of Contemporary Art in San Francisco. The exhibition will feature a series of large paintings, presenting elaborate figures and landscapes that explore motherhood and migration through an eco-feminist lens.
“Rupy’s paintings explore the complexities of maternal landscapes through a fine brush and a robust command of pigments that she makes herself,” said Jessica Silverman. “Her conceptual rigor combined with her fine craftsmanship are relevant to our program, and we’re thrilled that she’s joining us to advance the conversation about what it means to be human in our time.”
The selection of works on view at the ICA San Francisco will present an autobiographical
character, seen in tranquil states of body and mind, immersed in nature. Searching for ancestors (2023), Tut’s first painting on linen, depicts a woman’s face emerging from the peak of a craggily mountain—the mountain’s soft and hard edges shroud her body, and she appears fossilized in space and time. A mother of three children, Tut confidently embraces the responsibility and surrender of the everyday experience. In one of the largest works on paper, Portrait of a Woman (2023), the central figure embodies fertility—her pregnant belly is cradled in her hands, and she appears floating in a mandorla motif amidst a lush forest. Imbued with meaning, the repetition of eyes on the figure’s tunic reminds us of the value of vigilance, but also the multitude of selves that we create and procreate.
Rupy C. Tut, Portrait of a Woman, 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco. Photo: Phillip Maisel.
ABOUT RUPY C. TUT
Rupy C. Tut (b. 1985, Chandigarh, India) received a BS from UCLA and MPH from Loma Linda University, CA. She has enjoyed solo exhibitions including Search and Rescue, Jessica Silverman, San Francisco and A Recipe for Brown Skin, Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA; and A Journey Back Home, Peel Art Gallery and Museum Archives, Ontario. Tut’s work is in the permanent collection of Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; the de Young, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. She lives and works in Oakland, CA.
ABOUT JESSICA SILVERMAN
Jessica Silverman is an ambitious, international contemporary art gallery known for building artists’ careers and supporting art buyers keen on establishing relevant collections. Silverman founded her eponymous gallery in 2008. She has an MA in Curatorial Practice from San Francisco’s California College of the Arts and a BFA from Otis College in Los Angeles. Silverman sat on the San Francisco Arts Commission for nine years and is happy to consult on public art projects.
The gallery represents artists who make museum-worthy art at all stages of their careers. Works by the gallery’s artists have been acquired by museums such as the Tate (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museum Ludwig (Cologne), Reina Sofia (Madrid), MoMA (New York), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Hirshhorn (Washington D.C.), Pérez Art Museum (Miami), MCA Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center (Dallas), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), X Museum (Beijing) as well as museums in the San Francisco Bay Area – Asian Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, de Young Museum, SFMOMA, Stanford’s Cantor Art Center, etc.
Jessica Silverman shows regularly at Art Basel Miami Beach and intermittently at the Swiss, (Parisian, and Hong Kong editions of Art Basel. The gallery also participates in the Frieze fairs (Los Angeles and Seoul), the Armory (New York), and FOG Design + Art (San Francisco), among others. The gallery is a member of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA).
