Hand Prints | Mind Prints: Gulammohammed Sheikh: D-53 Defence Colony, New Delhi

"Sheikh began making digital prints in the New Media Art workshop held by the ARTunderground gallery in Baroda in 2001 where artists were given computers and facilitators. Always curious about new forms, he became intrigued by this medium which was ‘fast’ compared to the ‘slow’ processes of painting and printmaking. He was drawn to  the ‘ephemeral’ and the ‘concrete’ facets of the medium: the tension between the image illuminated on the screen and the physical transformation of that image when realized as a print. He calls these Mind Prints because for him the computer ‘replaces the hands with the mind, where the mind is central to finding, composing and making images.’ While the Hand Prints extended the idea of the multiple by including original graphic prints into little magazines, in Mind Prints, Sheikh is constantly in search of new ways to make the machine serve his painterly purpose, by introducing artisanal aspects like hand painting to make his digital prints unique. In his large digital print mural done for the Mumbai airport he used kinetic elements. A state-of-the-art digital workstation forms part of his artistic tools today.", writes visual artist and art curator Pushpmala N.