U.K.-based artist Harminder Judge has become known for his dynamic plaster and pigment works that evoke alchemical processes, spiritual transitions, and bodily transformations in death. Several of these pieces are included in the exhibition Bootstrap Paradox at MOCA Cleveland (January 24–June 1, 2025), Judge’s his first museum exhibition in the U.S. Judge’s highly technical practice approaches plaster as a sculptural medium. He repeatedly layers wet plaster, polymer, and pigments in large molds, manipulating both the materials and molds in order to achieve his desired compositions. He then sands and polished the panels with a view to making them less tangible as objects. Judge speaks of the completed works functioning like portals, inviting viewers to look through them and perhaps, thereby, contemplate the ineffable as signaled by his abstract color compositions. Judge’s artworks have invited comparisons with historic processes such as those associated with Renaissance tempera painting, as well as with twentieth-century modernist abstractions. However, an important conceptual underpinning of Judge’s plaster paintings relates to Indian cremation rites, and the transformations they bring about physically, metaphysically, and spiritually. Judge’s paintings—with their glowing colors and meditative qualities—also reference the practice of tantra, a diverse set of Indian spiritual and physical practices focusing on the achievement of spiritual liberation.