Latitude 28

Viewers familiar with Pratul Dash’s oeuvre will discover a startling change in his present solo exhibition. The artist is associated with a lush-hued figurative style combining politically engaged realism with Daliesque reverie. In contrast, his creations of the past three years are monochromatic semi-abstract landscapes, frequently constituted by tiny circular forms, painstakingly drawn, reminiscent of blood cells seen under high magnification. The new compositions, epic in scale, conjure night skies, caverns and grottos, cross sections of mountains, aerial views of alluvial tracts, and the earth seen from outer space. 

Figures do appear, including motifs used in previous paintings such as an ostrich with its head buried in the ground, but are dwarfed by their surroundings. Since these figures carry the political heft of paintings like the enormous six-panel canvas 24×7: A Global Discourse, their relative inconspicuousness could signal the marginalisation of inconvenient truths in an era marked by polarisation and weaponised disinformation. However, it would be an injustice to dismiss the intricate, exquisite patterns that dominate each painting as mere distractions from real issues represented by the figures. The foregrounding of the background, as it were, suggests that the artist is placing the present moment and immediate social concerns within a bigger picture involving nature’s sublimity, which is undiminished by humanity’s depredations. These two readings are contradictory yet simultaneously valid – like alternate orientations of a Necker cube – and taken together capture some of the complexity of signification generated by the show.

– Text by Girish Shahane