With the exhibition The Sun Rises At Midnight at Pablo Cardoza Gallery in Houston, Texas, Manik Raj Nakra excavates our relationship between the Earth and the Divine, and the political histories that influence our existence. The compositions in this suite of acid colored landscape paintings reference a common scene in “slasher” films - a quick framed shot of the killer’s raised arm with a weapon, except with apex predators as the slasher, reaching for the sky. Inspired by post-impressionism, colorfield painting, and the lyrical abstraction movement, these landscapes bloom and bleed on stained ceramic stucco.

The slasher interrupting the landscapes can allude to colonialism, power dynamics, and religion - as conquerors of the landscape or protectors of the landscape. By using animals historically associated as symbols of both European monarchies, heraldry, royal family crests and also as symbols of nature and indigenous deities, these animals reach out to heaven, walking the line of Manifest Destiny, and of revelations about our spiritual relationship to nature.