This new exhibition is fire!
Borough-based artist Nitin Mukul recently unveiled Heat Maps: Queens in Long Island City. It’ll be on view through January 2024.
The show focuses on three geographic areas — East Elmhurst-Corona, Jamaica-Hollis, and Kew Gardens-Richmond Hill — that have been rated High Risk on a scale called the “Heat Vulnerability Index.” Created outdoors in these neighborhoods, the project expounds on green space inequity and urban planning.
Mukul’s “durational painting video art” captures the effects of light, heat, and climate conditions at a specific site and time. Consider it a continuation of the 19th century Impressionists (i.e. Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro) who disrupted norms by depicting the atmospheric effects of light while painting outdoors on location. He begins by layering paint in sheets of ice, freezing each layer of paint, water, and various media so they accumulate layers of color and texture. Placing the frozen mass outside, it melts according to natural weather conditions while it is filmed.
The Heat Maps: Queens pieces incorporate references to hip hop culture, connecting the storytelling of rap artists from these neighborhoods to the realities of the landscapes.
Mukul developed the concept and formal process of durational painting in India in 2008. He was struck by what felt like new extremes in weather conditions which prompted him to experiment with painting as video, while using atmospheric conditions as a catalyst. He shot his first piece on a 108-degree afternoon.
His work has appeared at The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), Pioneer Works (Brooklyn), Lincoln Center (Manhattan), and the 2013 Queens Biennial at Queens Museum. In 2020, he was awarded an Artist Residency at the Caldera Arts Center in Oregon.
Heat Maps: Queens received support from a grant for Queens-based artists from the New York Foundation for the Art. See it for free at The Local NYC at 13-02 44th Ave. It’s near the Court Sq-23 St stop on the 7, E, M, G lines and the Queensboro Plaza station on the N, W, and 7 trains.
Images: Nitin Mukul