Harminder Judge has developed a distinctive practice that merges Indian neo-tantric painting with the legacies of Western abstraction and color field painting. Referring to his works as portals as much as objects, they are informed by ritual, spirituality, and deeply personal experiences. The exhibition’s title is drawn from Susan Howe’s 1975 poem Chanting at the Crystal Sea and reflects the way Judge’s work inhabits an in-between state, hovering between material and immaterial, presence and absence, surface and portal. During a visit to Punjab in early adolescence for his grandfather’s funeral, the ceremonial rites impressed upon him the profound transformation of body into ash, matter into spirit. This led to an ongoing meditation on the spaces between life and death, material and immaterial, conscious and subconscious, which resonate throughout his practice.

Judge’s floor installation transforms the act of entering the gallery into a physical and conceptual threshold. Visitors find themselves simultaneously standing upon and surrounded by the very substance of Judge’s practice. Made of the same plaster and pigment that constitute the wall works, Judge collapses the distinctions between object and environment. The shaped wall works further intensify this effect, appearing like slabs of rock or portals pried open, deepening the viewer’s sense of inhabiting the work rather than observing it.