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I'm fascinated by Abir Karmakar's latest series of paintings titled From my Photo Album . Baroda based Karmakar is known for the blasé self portraits of him laying around his room in the buff , sometimes a provocative and obvious rendition of his sexuality . In his latest series he continues to make an appearance in all of his paintings in representations of everyday lives and states of mind. I like the slight hyperbole in his portrayal of 'regular' life. Images from here.
I remember seeing some of his earlier work & if im not wrong he's added a LOT more detail into this new series. But his take has not changed. Really edgy stuff. I don't know if I'd be way off mark, if I said his work brinks to mind Bhupen Kakkar.
ReplyDeleteI really like... for some reason, this reminds me of Diane Arbus' photographs - surreal, hyper-real slices of lives beyond ordinariness...
ReplyDeletealso I love that couch. My parents had one like it, before Ikea came along and everyone suddenly got scandinavian-cool taste.
At first I had trouble discerning if these were photographs or paintings....amazing. The detail is absolutely fabulous.
ReplyDeleteVindy
Vin : I'm not overtly familiar with the work of Bhupen Kakkar, I've seen a couple of sketches at a gallery once. I prefer this series, the first was quite bold but it was homoerotic overkill .
ReplyDeleteHM: I love Diana Arbus, there is the possibility of Karmakar being influenced by her photographs.
Vindy: I did too :) His technique was more painterly before so I thought he had switched to experimenting with photography since he always put different versions of himself in his portraits. It's quite amazing.
These are unusual. If anything these snapshot-style paintings remind me of Anay Mann's photography...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, there's a show of 12 new big paintings by Abir coming up on the first of October at Gallery Espace in Delhi. Just got back from checking them out for a preview I'm writing. The works are all 2008 but much more typical of the earlier, more painterly style you refer to--all saturated by that kind of orange-ish, flattening interior light that I associate with his work more generally. The paintings thematically are highly sexual but not particularly shocking if you're familiar with Abir's earlier work.