Evolving Contrasts
This series depicts the contrasts that strike me each time I visit my home town in India. My drawings and paintings emphasize the distinction between today’s modernized, tech savvy, consumerist society, and the large number of people I encounter on the streets, oblivious to this development. I explore the irony in migrant workers constructing luxury condos, and the contrast of these structures with their chaotic work conditions. My art is also a reflection on the transitions in my own life, growing up in a carefree, unoptimized and low tech environment, and now working on the cutting edge of technology in Silicon Valley. Although set in a specific Indian city, the contradictions I observe allude to a more universal disparity. I portray this with different media, ranging from large scale charcoal drawings, oil on canvas, and ink drawings on printouts of my research source code, to assemblages of found objects including acrylic paintings on paper shopping bags. Some of my large scale drawings are built up using a grid, which stems from the affinity of my engineering trained mind to logical, structured arrangements. I see the grid as essential to the work, bringing together heterogeneous experiences to form a unified whole. Since I can always add to a grid drawing, it is never really finished and is a perpetual work in progress.
