In his first solo exhibition in Bangalore after a gap of more than a decade, Bangalore-based artist Babu Eshwar Prasad, will showcase a new body of work at Gallery Sumukha from February 20.
Titled, “Skin of the Earth”, the exhibition will showcase paintings, digital prints, and videos, centred around the idea of soil.
Here Prasad, who has been working on the theme since 2008, explores its links with ecology, the realities and consequences industrialization and its impact on the landscape.
“In the present series I have been preoccupied with the effects of industrialization and its social, economic, ecological and ethical dilemmas. India’s post-independence development strategies have left their ironical tell-tale signs on the soil, and, this is what I am interested in excavating. I pick up images that speak to me with new meaning and reinvent them in my mind. I create these images with a specific intention and I strive to make each image engaging like visual poetry, a haiku, or a philosophical verse that I can call my own,” says Prasad.
A write-up by the gallery describes one of his works, “Yellow Earth” as showing a trunk lying open with a loud speaker placed inside and an insertion of a depleted landscape above it.
In “Open and Shut”, industrial equipment becomes the backdrop to a veiled form.
In another series, Prasad also works with anthills as a representation, sometimes placing them against elements from an urban landscape.
“There is emphasis on the absence of human presence; and the absence of a narrative through figuration. I am deliberately conscious about my effort to record and interpret what I see. Hence, what you see in my paintings are alternate realities derived from my tactile and visual experiences of the city.”
“Skin of the Earth” opens on February 20 at Gallery Sumukha, 24/10, BTS Bus Depot Road, Wilson Garden.
It will remain on view until March 13. For details, contact 22292230.
