INDIA MAHDAVI PROJECT ROOM 18

Celebrating Another Grammar of Ornament as part of MATTER and SHAPE (hors les murs). India Mahdavi Project Room N°18, curated by Dan Thawley, continues until April 12, 2025.

Following their first collaboration for the exhibition Foreign Flowers in 2024, this second exhibition provokes an unexpected discourse between the 19th and 21st centuries through the subject of ornament, stemming from the canonical work The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones (1856) and the contemporary response New Grammar of Ornament by the German architect and artist Thomas Weil (2021). Here, Weil’s life-long dedication to the international vocabulary of decorative forms comes to life, featuring original paintings and sketches in conversation with historic works and contemporary commissions, provoking new conversations between unlikely bedfellows.