Letters to Myself

Preetal Shah

October 23 – December 3, 2025 

Opening Reception: October 23, 2025 6–8pm  
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About the Exhibition 

Shah’s paintings explore the threshold between language and image through typographic abstraction. Letters, fragments, and traces of text appear not as words to be read but as forms to be seen. By dissolving written structures into layered compositions, Shah aims to suspend meaning, holding language in a state of becoming rather than a declaration. Influenced by his training in architecture and graphic design, and his fascination with graffiti, he engages the canvas with both object (3D) and plane (2D). These disciplines intersect in his work as systems of order and interruption: the planned and the improvised, the monumental and the ephemeral.  

At its core, the work questions how messages are built, broken, and perceived. What happens when letters lose their legibility? When the eye shifts from reading to looking, the familiar becomes abstract—revealing new rhythms, densities, and voids. These paintings invite viewers into that unstable space: where language is no longer a fixed code but an architecture of marks, a visual field that both conceals and reveals the possibility of meaning.  

Preetal Shah (American, born 1977, Los Angeles, California, based in Austin, Texas) draws inspiration for his artistic practice from his background in architecture. He holds a Master's in Urban Design and Architecture from Columbia University, a Master's in Science of Architecture from the University of Houston, and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Houston. His latest works navigate the interplay between typography and three-dimensional space, while exploring the abstraction of letterforms and symbols. Shah has exhibited nationally and locally, with exhibitions in Austin, Houston, and New York.