Modular Waltz Avantika Bawa

To experience Avantika Bawa’s art is to feel palpably her love of architecture: a contagious curiosity. In Modular Waltz, the artist explores the sculptural beauty of buildings as well as their skeletal frameworks —architecture inside and out — through an ongoing series of drawings and scaffold constructions.

Bawa’s drawings apply localized scrutiny to great Modernist buildings. After many years of portraying glass-ensconced works by renowned architecture firms like America’s Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, in Modular Waltz Bawa turns to Brutalist architecture and the work of legendary Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who saw many landmark buildings completed in India and South Asia. “Architecture goes beyond utilitarian needs,” the architect wrote in 1920’s Towards a New Architecture. “Passion can create drama out of inert stone.” Bawa’s new series of drawings allows us to see these buildings with new eyes.

By isolating architecture from any geographical or urban context, Bawa celebrates Modernism’s elegantly simple geometry. Yet what resonates most powerfully is her drawings’ subtle yet inherent imperfection. While Modern architecture is defined by its machined precision, and Bawa renders admirably straight lines, the slight imperfection paradoxically adds beauty.

Bawa’s scaffolding installations, a continuing exploration of recent years, transform this most utilitarian of temporary structures into an exploration. Going in Modular Walz from drawing to sculpture and from portraying exterior forms to recreating skeletal frameworks, the artist is able to not just see architecture but consider how its forms interact with and (to borrow from Le Corbusier’s most famous dictum) are revealed in light. Bawa’s scaffolds, rendered both in sculpture and in accompanying drawings, reduce architecture to its barest essence.

Modular Waltz is a compelling human story, in which the artist passes on to us her fascination. The exhibit is also a kind of lesson in how to perceive the geometry of buildings in a way that transcends the architecture itself.

Words Brian Libby
Date 11.02.2025