Harminder Judge is one of the UK’s most exciting artists working today. Combining a sensitivity to
colour, form, the history of abstract painting and his own personal experience, he creates richly
layered, transportive and poetic works that glow and shine.

 

Judge’s work is abstract in expression but deeply personal in origin. In this exemplary work, Untitled (eye in eye rising), black pigment, floating throughout the surface, recalls Judge’s experience of witnessing funeral rites in Punjab. Here, the bodies of those who have transitioned into death are washed, prepared, and cremated on a pyre; the body becomes ash, the material becomes immaterial. The black pigment in this instance evokes a landscape, as well as ash, body, and spirit in one.

 

The capacity of colour and form to evoke and signify many things at once is at the heart of the
work’s transformative potential. Glowing above the black field below, the red dot suggests a burning sun over a landscape, while also recalling the circle, dot and spiral used in Neo-Tantric painting and the work of other artists Judge admires, including Forrest Bess and Louise Bourgeois.

 

Harminder Judge (b. 1982 in Rotherham, UK) lives and works in London, UK. He graduated from the Royal Academy Schools, London in 2021. His work is currently on display in the exhibition Love Letter at Pace Gallery, New York, which he co-curated with artist Loie Hollowell. Recent exhibitions include a solo presentation at The Sunday Painter’s booth at Frieze London (2022); The Horror Show, Somerset House, London (2022); Rising Skin from Rock & Chin, The Sunday Painter, London (2022); Ankles Absorbing Ash, Humber Street Gallery, Hull, UK (2022); Harminder Judge: mountain and mercies, galeriepcp, Paris, France (2021); Am I Human To You?, Jugendstilsenteret & Kube Museum, Ålesund, Norway (2021); Tomorrow: London, White Cube, London (2020); Our Ashes Make Great Fertilizer (co-curated group), Public Gallery, London (2020); and At Home In The Universe, alongside Mahriwan Mamtani, Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai, India (2019).