The Brooklyn Rail

The exhibition space at Mister Fahrenheit is partially subterranean. A horizontal work in graphite is installed across from the entrance—the only work that appears to sit above the earth. It is accompanied by two ear-shaped rocks positioned to its side, perched atop a piece of white A4 paper. The ceiling is low on the mezzanine level of the gallery, but the vast energetic field of the painting distracts from the parameters that contain it. The surface changes as you approach LMV_25 (2025), depending on the light and where you stand, shifting between a cool, matte flatness and a granular, metallic glow. At the right time of day there is an abundance of natural light from a curved skylight, and you can peer down into the hull of the space and find the two largest paintings beaming beneath you.

These new works by N. Dash pick up with her meditations on, or, possibly, conversations with, the materials she engages. She pairs oil, acrylic, and Styrofoam alongside string, rock, and jute, to name a few. Earth matter itself is in the foundation of her practice and is embedded into most of her work. Through her reworking, it is re-situated—elevated—into our field of vision.

The paintings function like anchors as you descend the staircase into the exhibition space, balancing their angle of the room from the wall they inhabit. The act of lifting earth onto canvas and installing it back below ground may contribute to their resonant grounding effect. There is an element of natural decay or processing implied in each—you’ll find a patina-like gradation, characteristic of weathered Cor-Ten steel in the deep blue and purple pigments of VML_25 (2025), or the fraying, biomorphic form of the fabric sculpture magnified through silkscreen in VFSWC_25 (2025). The works are given designations rather than titles, so as not to obscure their presence in the way a name might.

The scale of the work evades direct relation to human form, ranging slightly larger or smaller in height or width. Still, there is an elemental and energetic relationship to the body. The works function like sites unto themselves—altars or totems. There is a sweeping reverence inherent here, that allows each work to thrive both within and without the architecture of the space. Dash calls the installation “site-responsive,” where the work appears to have hooked into the existing framework. The effect is environmental, like stonecrop beginning to spread across the surface of a rock.

The works are sculptural and textured, drawing you in for closer inspection. Strings wrap around the earth face of WCST_25 (2025), which partially conceals a sink tucked under the stairwell of the space. Strings embedded in the earth ground are painted in white acrylic, creating ridges and cracks on the surface, and exposed against the bare jute. A rock shaped like a tongue sits on top of the work—a time-spanning signature in conversation with the materials beneath it. Another example, SP_25 (2025), sits low in a back corner: a silkscreen canvas placed on steps made of bright, sea foam Styrofoam blocks. A long, phallic, mud-colored rock is propped on top. The canvas is printed with a rosette of cyan and magenta ink, creating a modulated purple—a bit like static on a screen, or a mineral. Building elements like this is Dash’s particular kind of subtle alchemy. The combination allows for a possible conflation of organic and inorganic matter, a melding of corporeal and alien.

While in the space, I kept thinking about Robert Smithson’s 1968 essay for Artforum, “A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Proposals.” Smithson talks about “primary envelopment,” a place where tools and materials lose their separateness—where everything sinks back into its original state. Dash builds and blends materials without force, and they don’t separate cleanly into image and substrate. Everything is folded in. Earth becomes both base and subject, structure and residue.

There’s also the question of the “Non-site”—Smithson’s idea of a fragment removed from its source and relocated into a new structure. Dash’s paintings carry this idea forward—they hold earth, but they also hold absence—the sense of having come from somewhere else. They don’t aim to resolve anything—they just keep layering. The works seem to offer a new kind of patient and persistent form of entropy. Dash’s work is most effective in that it never overstates this. There’s no spectacle, just quiet precision. It is tactile thinking—a kind of intimate geology. The work doesn’t deliver a message so much as a condition, where the materials speak for themselves.