Nature Morte

A Conscious Stream

07 - 28 Jul 2012

Exhibition view
A CONSCIOUS STREAM
With works by Santana Gohain, Suhasini Kejriwal, Alexis Kersey, Gieve Patel,
Justin Ponmany, and Mithu Sen.
7 - 28 July 2012

On display at Nature Morte for the month of July will be a group exhibition of works in a variety of media.

Justin Ponmany’s large-scale photographic works are cartographic portraits. Heads have been shot from all sides, elongated and enlarged, to create map-like projections. The same treatment has been given to cricket balls. The results are both disconcerting and familiar. Also on view are some of Mr. Ponmany’s signature canvases using holographic pigments (a set of four panels that surrounds and interrogates the viewer) and his suites of graphic drawings on paper.

Santana Gohain’s works (graphite on paper adhered to boards) are darkly dense meditations on texture and calligraphic notations. Vertical and brooding, they seem to absorb light and resemble funeral stelae carved from stone. Her voice is startlingly unique in Indian art.

Alexis Kersey combines marquetry techniques with painting to make lusciously hybridized portraits of other-worldly beings. These face off with three “Mourners” by Gieve Patel, elegiac odes to suffering and loss. Mithu Sen’s supersized works on paper display a sureness of line and an economy of means, exploring self-portraiture from both inside and out.

Finally, Suhasini Kejriwal is represented by two sculptures and two paintings. The paintings are devoid of color, exchanging an investigation into the myriad tonalities of grey with her previous multi-hued collage works. Realist street and market scenes, these works share the same over-attention to detail and hyper-conscious observation. Her sculptures fuse the human with the vegetable, botany with science fiction, amusement with the macabre.
 

Tags: Suhasini Kejriwal, Justin Ponmany, Mithu Sen