Basist Kumar
Extension
2018
Oil on Canvas
191×165 cm
Basist Kumar paints landscapes that are overwhelming in their detail. Yet it is hard to locate any sort of subject matter, even when a mountain or a lake is present. It is as if he is painting containers of weather and light. There is the sense of something epic going on, as if from ancient myth, yet it can't really be articulated. His painterly technique hits a level of verisimilitude that is buoyant, crystalline and bracing. The artist has spoken of his subject as Nature: “Our experience of Nature, as an everyday encounter, is charged with mysticism and spirituality. What interests me about Nature is a specific perceived enigmatic quality. Both birth and death are rooted in Nature and throughout our lives we develop physical and psychological relationships with it.”
Born in 1984, Kumar received his BFA in 2007 from the College of Art, Delhi University and his MFA in 2009 from the Vishwa-Bharati University, Santiniketan. By this time he was developing a style of painting which featured individual, often abbreviated, figures in landscapes that only resembled reality. A scholarship from the Ministry of Culture enabled him to study at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, China for two years (2013-2015) and the results of this immersion can be seen in this exhibition. There is an attention to detail and a stillness in his paintings that is difficult to comprehend in our fast-paced, digitized times. There is a conceptual, meditative gravitas to these landscapes, they are like fever dreams, they seem to defy cognition.
courtesy of naturemorte.com