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Artist Profile
| Prashanta Sahu |
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PRASHANTA SAHU :
Commingling pictures and text, Sahu borrows motifs from the mass media. The black and white photographic images adopt a documentary style of address, presenting a snippet of everyday reality, such as we would be likely to find in a newspaper or magazine clipping. Yet, in Sahu’s oeuvre, this process of citation operates on multiple levels.
The artist is intensely aware of the pictorial surface of the canvas. Monochromatic pictures are contrasted with vividly painted areas and abrasions on the canvas form interesting textural motifs. However, in his work Sahu moves away from the high-modernist obsession with the formal properties of the painted surface. The paintings operate as performative gestures connecting the realms of art and society.
For example, if Sahu draws attention to the materiality of the canvas through deliberately disfiguring its surfaces, the technique also highlights the symbolic importance of the image thus blemished. Violence is enacted on the pictorial surface, so that art is no longer the terrain of isolated intellectual pleasure, it becomes part and parcel of our social and political environment: both implicated in its aggression and a place for critique.
As such, Sahu's painting functions as social commentary. Acutely conscious of the inherent conflicts in the urban condition, his works draw ironic, sometimes poignant, attention to its underlying brutality and cloaked hypocrisies. The crowd forms a familiar theme in his canvases. Through the depiction of its seething mass of faces, the artist analyses common human sentiments and the complicated relation between individual consciousness and collective deeds.
The artist lives and works in Santiniketan.
Education
- 1998-2000 Master of Fine Arts (Painting), Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda
- 1993-98 Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting), Kala-Bhavana, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan
- 1986-87 Training in Electrical Engineering, Orissa
- 1983-86 Diploma in Electrical Engineering, Barapada School of Engineering & Technology, Orissa
Exhibitions
Selected Group Exhibitions
- 2009 'Life is A Stage', Institute of Contemporary Indian Art (ICIA), Mumbai
- 2008 'Art for Freedom', a Group Show cum Auction in London, jointly organized by Tehelka Art and Aicon Gallery, London
- 2008 1x1 Art Gallery, Dubai
- 2008 'Image of One's Own Self', Gallery Kolkata, Kolkata
- 2008 'A MAZ ING', organized by RPG Enterprises at Jehangir art gallery, Mumbai
- 2007 'Embodied', Gallery Art and Soul, Mumbai
- 2007 ‘Young Guns’, Institute of Contemporary Indian Art (ICIA), Mumbai
- 2007 'Flow, Freeze, Focus', Gallery Kolkata, Kolkata
- 2007 ‘VI(S)VA’, a Chronicle of Difference, Three Person Show, AICON Art Gallery, New York
Selected Joint Exhibitions
- 2005 ‘The Sense of Touch’, with Heeral Trivedi at Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai
Participations
- 2008 'Harmony Show', Nehru Centre, Mumbai
- 2008 'Synchrome-IV', jointly organized by Tao Art Gallery and Gallery Akar Prakar, Kolkata at Tao art Gallery, Mumbai
- 2008 ‘The Miniature Format Show – Part I’, Sans Tache Art Gallery, Mumbai
- 2008 ‘The Miniature Format Show – Part III’, Sans Tache Art Gallery, Mumbai
- 2007 ‘12th Harmony Show’, Nehru Centre, Mumbai
- 2007 Internatinal Art Fair, Rome
- 2006 ‘Synchrome-III’, Gallery Akar Prakar, Kolkata
- 2005 ‘Synchrome II’, Gallery Akar Prakar, Kolkata
Honours and Awards
- 2001 Awarded Gold Medal for Securing 1st Position in Department of Painting, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda
- 2000 Nasreen Mehmodi Trust Award for Securing 1st Position in Master of Fine Arts (M. F. A.)Level
- 2000 Awarded for the Best Entry at Rangpur Painting Camp, organized by Camlin India Ltd
- 1999 Nasreen Mehmodi Scholarship for the Best Student in Position in Master of Fine Arts (M. F. A.)Level, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda
- 1997 Camlin Award for Securing 1st Position in Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.)level, Kala-Bhavana, Santiniketan.
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