Thomas Erben is pleased to present the gallery's first solo exhibition with Schandra Singh, after her inclusion in two group shows, in 2012 and 2013. Working in oil on exposed linen - often at a monumental scale - Singh takes on the fraught landscape of the vacation industry, letting intricate detail sprawl into sketch-like brushstrokes.

One of the most immediate features of Schandra Singh's work is the almost grotesquely rendered bodies of her subjects, with the skin at first glance seemingly turned inside out, exposing muscle and tendons…

The show shares its name with Candide, the unlucky, naive protagonist of Voltaire's satirical 18th century novel, who travels the world only to be met by war, natural disaster, and religious fanaticism. Although he attempts to stay optimistic in the face of suffering, Candide's tragic journey ends with the declaration that we should simply stay put and cultivate our garden. The calamities of the 18th century still plague our global village today, and Schandra Singh's new paintings update the question posed by Candide for a contemporary audience: how do we shelter ourselves in troubled times?

Say "tourism" ten times fast and it starts to sound like "terrorism." Just as this word-play will lead you to a certain linguistic dissonance and uncertainty so too will Schandra Singh's paintings take us to a purgatorial space of contrived paradise. Singh's newest collection of paintings depicts portraits of families vacationing at tropical resorts and those who reside in the local towns cum pseudo paradises. And what might at first sound like an innocuous subject matter quickly becomes loaded with tension and visual dynamism in Singh's apt hands.

As an artist whose cultural heritage stems from India and Austria, Schandra Singh uses the mode of storytelling of the Indian miniature painter juxtaposed with inspirations of the irony and satire found in Expressionism and Neo-expressionism.

Schandra Singh wants to whisk us off to Paradise. Not the version thought to be crammed with angelic virgins but the one that comes equipped with heated swimming pools, artificial lagoons, gated estates, sunscreens and festive floatation devices. Schandra Singh wants us to reimagine this Paradise as a people-zoo. A place to see real people pretending to enjoy themselves in dioramas and concentric cages of their own choosing. Schandra Singh wants to re-image Paradise–frame a kind of Expressionist vacation slideshow where promises of escape-ism turn out to be Faustian lures for carnivalesque scenes of beached carnage. Hers is not a Paradise Lost but a Paradise Askew.

In her exhibition entitled Around and Around 1000 Times, Schandra Singh presents large-scale paintings that address the issue of escapism as a means of coping with suffering. Her characters attempt to manage their inner crises and conflicts by fleeing from their fears, guilt, or responsibilities through various forms of leisure activity. Singh intentionally selects the silliest means possible to ironically underscore the weightiness of the struggles she explores, as many of her adult subjects try to occupy themselves with recreational activities often associated with children…