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10
THE STATESMAN 15 DECEMBER 1971
Art
Zarina's new screenprints 
By Our Art Critic 
For the last few years, Zarina's graphics, minimal and austere, seem to have been measuring the emptiness of a visual vacuum. Even when she was encahnted with the texture of wood in her graphics, she was assuming the nullity of everything else around. Last year, when she opened up empty white space by enclosing it wiht black geometrical planes, she was, in fact,"opening up emptiness" to say that it was empty. In this search one could detect a strain of sadness, unusual in abstract graphics. 

Zarina's recent harvest of screenprints, exhibited at Shridharani Gallery by Gallery Chanakya, have the professional finnesse that generally marks her works. Here again, deliberate repetition of apparently gay patterns in white on grey opens up visually stimulating doors to nullity. White road tracks venture into grey emptiness and then flee. Her recetn experiments include pieces that show threadtitches mending the embossed white emptiness. The most sad adn tender piece, was one where a lonely knot tied up the white emptiness of a corrugated sheet. On view till January 17. 

ARTS
Democratic World 17 January 1974 
If the aim of Zarina's graphics is the emphasise the emptiness of space she succeeds only in some four of her score or so exhibits at Triveni. Such emphasis can be made by little more than one line or one figure set amid vastness. When the space contains much more than this, it becomes insignificant-this though the compositon itself be neat and attactive. In one composition, thick blackness jags across white; in another, two slim black acute angles stud the whitness; in a third, an off-white angular hook, with short diagonals of similar shade marching behind, is set against slivery-grey. In these the simplicity makes one more conscious than one would have been otherwise of the lines as well as of the space.In another piece a white curve arching across sliver-grey breaks off into two consecutive "dashes". The tension causes the illusion of actually hearing the curve break. The impact these pieces have, are not given by the other, less simple prints, including the embossed ones and the tapestry, pleasing though they are in themselves. 

Superb Serigraphs 
By Zarina 
By Our Art Critic 
Gallery Chanakya has put on view the latest work of the able graphic artist, Zarina-a set of serigraphs which are more meticulous than ever, even for Zarina whose works have always stood out int his respect. While considering those serigraphs, which are as precisely executed as any hard-edge painting, it is impossible not to think of her earlier wood-prints. 
It seems these severe juxtaposition of shapes is, after all. a logical follow-up of the distinct element of constuction and relief run in a few of her works in her last show in September, 1970. I miss the quivering textural nuance of the wood-prints, the agility of line and the free, organic interplay of line and texture But 
Art 
Zarina provides in their place an almost ascetic pairing of rectangular shapes: grey and black (Print NO.6), black and silver tape and the pure black (Print No.7). 
These flat areas emerge sharply against the stark white of the paper. There is only one print (No.14) where the vertical rise of zig-zag structure (in alternating black and metallic grey) which has some affinity to her previous works and it might well mark the point of departure. What she does now is close to minimal art-and at its best. The print surface is absolutely uniform the edges are razor-sharp and the shapes poised so as to evoke a strange visual sensation. 
On view till December 21, daily between 10 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.