Francesco Clemente: Emblems of Transformation, Blain|Southern

Blain|Southern stages a new show of sumptuous watercolours by Francesco Clemente, inspired by his travels to India. Influenced by Indian miniature painters, this new show radiates with the traditions of Indian visual culture.
Francesco Clemente biography
Italian-born Clemente first travelled to India in 1973, where he established connections with Indian craftspeople, but found his heart in New York in the 1980s in the company of contemporary trailblazers like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Allen Ginsberg. Much like his living arrangements, Clemente's work is hugely nomadic in his movements between Indian and American influences. You may have seen his enormous retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, New York in 1999, and his acclaimed shows at the Centre Pompidou, Paris and Royal Academy, London.
Blain|Southern exhibition
You'll find 108 paintings at the Blain|Southern gallery, which is the exact number of beads used to make the Hindu and Buddhist japa mala necklace. Each work moves seamlessly onto the next, like a fluid string of beads moving between symbols of love, war and mythology, and mutating creatures. It's all about opposite forces of life and death, dark and light in Clemente's work, which has always been inward looking in its questioning of the self.
Guided by his love of Indian culture, art is a powerful tool in Clemente's hand.