Nature Morte is pleased to present the exhibition: The Soul in the Space (A Journey of Architectural Influences), a series of new photographs by the renowned fashion designer JJ Valaya. 

Mr. Valaya’s second series of photographic works is both more abstract and more personal. The focus of “The Soul in the Space” is on details of architecture shot in three locations that connect with his own biography: Jodhpur (the city of his birth), Chandigarh (the city where he was raised), and Dufftown, Scotland (where he first discovered architectural photography during an artist’s residency). With the precise eye of an accomplished designer, Mr. Valaya concentrates on mass, line and texture in both black-and-white and color works, composing starkly dynamic scenarios that approximate a painterly aesthetic but also unmoor the subjects from their original contexts. The prints on view will range from large-scale blow-ups that communicate a monumental grandeur to sets of smaller prints that are grouped together, creating syncopated rhythms. Mr. Valaya’s palette is purposefully reductive yet still highly sumptuous, relishing the chromatic nuances to be discovered in stone, metal and concrete.