Pratap Morey
Gap in the mind-III
2014
Mixed media -Drawing, engraving and archival print on archival board
76 X 91 X 5 cm
Pratap Morey is a Mumbai-based artist with a post-graduate diploma in Indian Aesthetics from Mumbai University and a graduate degree in Fine Art from Vasai Vikasini College of Visual Arts. Pratap has lived and worked in Mumbai for the most part of his life, and has been constantly displaced by the city’s shifting facades. He seeks inspiration from his immediate surroundings, exploring the spatial existence of its residents and the dualism of a colossal urban sprawl where vacant spaces are rapidly transformed into formidable structures. The artist uses a combination of digital photographic images, archival prints, architectural drawings and engravings in his intricate paper works. Each work delves into the overarching themes of construction, redevelopment and displacement — which are immediate concerns in a contemporary urban environment. The radical proliferation of urban spaces is an urgency that Pratap’s practice abstracts and presents to the viewer in his version of relief sculpture. The structural elevations in his works are restrained deliberations to amplify and reveal movement and metamorphosis as well as create an illusion of voids. He uses the structural nature of his works as a tool to create space, utilizing formal structures like corners and the three-point perspective to draw the viewer into each of his works.
Pratap has participated in several curated group shows, including The Unbearable Closeness of Being at Gallery Engendered, New Delhi (2015); the Art on Paper biennale at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, North Carolina, USA (2014); Interstices at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2012); Stop Making Sense at False Ceiling Gallery, Mumbai (2012); and @rt Virtually Real at Art Alive Gallery, New Delhi (2012) among others. His art fair participation includes United Art Fair, co-curated by Meera Menezes under the Artistic Direction of Peter Nagy, New Delhi (2013) and India Art Fair, New Delhi (2013), represented by Art Alive Gallery.
He has participated in residencies at several institutions such as the Harmony Art Foundation, India (2015); the Artists-In-Residence programme hosted by the President of India at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Delhi (2014); CRACK International Residency, Bangladesh (2013); Space 118, Mumbai (2012); and Uttarayan Art Foundation, Vadodara (2012), and is also the recipient of the Bendre-Husain-Scholarship, India (2013) and the La Critique award at Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, France (2012).
Courtesy of anantart.com, tarq.in, artmbassy.com