Rajiv Menon Contemporary is proud to present The Source, the first Los Angeles solo exhibition by India-born, California-based artist Trishla Jain. Through a distinctive language of abstraction, Jain interprets her experience of samadhi, a state of meditative consciousness articulated in South Asian religions. Drawing upon years of meditation practice, she translates experiences of breathwork, stillness, and flow into color, form, and gesture.
Jain presents two interconnected bodies of work. The first, Yantra, employs geometric and linear forms that emerge from the repeated rhythms of breath and concentration. The second, Tantra, moves toward more fluid compositions, evoking a liberated inner landscape in which free-flowing yet deliberate marks coalesce into fantastical forms. In both bodies of work, vibrant colors contrast and flow to present a synesthesia of the spirit, giving visible form to unseen inner forces.
Jain’s work enters into a wider dialogue with Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting. Her translation of sensation through color and form finds resonance with artists ranging from Lee Ufan to Mark Rothko to Agnes Martin. She also evokes shared systems of knowledge, including the biological, technological, and astrological. Yet Jain arrives at this language not through deliberate references, but through a sustained engagement with her own spiritual practice. Her compositions reach toward powerful emotional insights by drawing upon something at once primordial and shared: a collective sense of consciousness and the spirit—the source.
Through the specificity of samadhi, the artist arrives at something universal and culturally unbound. Her paintings pulsate with an energy that seems to exceed the physical experience of the world. They give form to the ineffable moments that characterize meditation: the passage from stillness into depth, the dissolution of the self into the collective, and the wonder of the flow state.
Jain teases out the spiritual energy of the source—otherwise invisible, like electricity or heat—and gives it a visual language. In mapping her own inner world, she offers us a means of navigating ours.
Trishla Jain (b. 1985, New Delhi, India) lives and works in Palo Alto, California. She received her B.A. in English from Stanford University and M.Ed. from Teachers College, New York.
Solo exhibitions include In Equilibrium, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, USA (2026); The Quiet Interlude, Bikaner House, New Delhi, India and Akara Art, Mumbai, India (2025); Portals, Glass Rice, San Francisco, USA (2024); Nowness in Time, Akara Art, Mumbai, India (2023); Cartwheels In Your Honor, Exhibit 320, New Delhi, India (2013); Kaleidoscope Eyes, Sunaparanta Art Centre, Goa, India (2012).
Group exhibitions include Winter Show, Sundaram Tagore Gallery, New York, USA (2025); Patterns & Symmetry, San Francisco Women’s Art Gallery in affiliation with de Young Museum, San Francisco, California (2021); and Cynical Love: Life in the Everyday, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Noida, India (2012).
