SUJITH S.N.
Seer–Seen
6 March 2020 – 27 March 2020
Monday – Saturday | 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Vadehra Art Gallery
D-53 Defence Colony, New Delhi – 110049
Vadehra Art Gallery is pleased to announce Sujith S.N.’s solo show, Seer–Seen, a series of landscapes engulfed by the temporality of loitering and purpose, of documentation and discourse, of perspectives and views.
The following excerpt on Sujith’s new body of work is from the essay, ‘The Oddness of Identification: Sujith S.N.’s Landscapes like Painting’ (2020) by Prajna Desai:
Landscape like painting is deathless within subcontinental art, and a central asset of painter Sujith SN’s series Seer-Seen is its unabashed conformity to these useful models, indistinguishable from each other in so far as scores of Indian artists since the early twentieth century have not only been painters. In marrow and bone, they have been, as far as landscape in its broad definition connotes terrain and its occupants, landscape painters alone. The oddness of the current presentation, which includes seven or eight large horizontally composed images of expanses of water, great walls, and substantial wastes, and an equal number of preparatory sketches, is one of identification. It is impossible to locate where boredom begins and contemplation ends, where the creative contagion of falling into a brown study as someone makes a work becomes a space of intensity that could reshape viewing. How much, before finally turning away, do you end up seeing of the sea? The punning title, ‘Seer-Seen’, comes with a nod to the scientific vernacular of optical complexity. Other than this, Sujith’s visual approach throughout this emotively ambiguous set of works spurns all but a two-sided conclusion. The representational impulse cannot be judged by the object that incited it. Nor will its compressions and reordering match the elasticity of the object that penetrated the imagination in the first place.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in 1979 in Baroda, Gujarat, India, Sujith SN completed an MFA from the Sarojini Naidu School of Fine Arts, Performing Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad in 2007, and a BFA from the College of Fine Arts, Thrissur, University of Calicut in 2005. He also has a diploma as a civil draughtsman.
His solo shows include The City and the Tower, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 2008; Map Is not the Territory, Latitude 28, New Delhi, 2010; Psalms of Silence and Dark, HSLU, Lucerne, Switzerland, 2011; Stains of Stimuli, Forum Art Gallery, Chennai, 2014; Archipelago, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2017.
He has also participated in shows at Art Basel, Hong Kong, 2016; India Art Fair, 2016; Religare Art, Delhi, 2013; Durbar Hall, Kochi, 2013 and 2007; Bodhi Gallery, New Delhi, 2011; and Sakshi Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2011, to name a few.
He has won several awards including the Kerala Lalit Kala Academy special mention award in 2004, the Kerala Lalit Kala Academy state award in 2005 and the Foundation of Indian Contemporary Art emerging artist award in 2011. He was also long-listed for the Skoda Prize in 2011.
The artist lives and works in Mumbai.
