Lot 61

PROPERTY FROM AN IMPORTANT COLLECTION, NEW DELHI My work is informed by history, mythology, real and imaginary events, art history, notions of tradition and identity and its relationship with modernity, language, sexuality, politics, and other faiths, etc. Without emphasizing any of these in particular, I address these issues simultaneously. I create a vocabulary of images that are fed from a variety of sources and this offers me rich and diverse parables of reference to structure connectives and marry evocative associations of meaning. The images are often like cryptic clues, which assist one to decode the invested meaning that is disguised through oblique and elaborate devices of representation. Surendran Nair

SURENDRAN NAIR (B. 1956)

The Labyrinth of Eternal Delight

Details

SURENDRAN NAIR (B. 1956)
The Labyrinth of Eternal Delight
signed, dated, numbered and titled (as illustrated)
hand coloured etchings on paper
12¼ x 6½ in. (31.1 x 16.5 cm.) largest image
4¼ x 5 7/8 in. (10.8 x 14.9 cm.) smallest image
14¾ x 10¼ in. (37.5 x 26 cm.) each sheet
Executed in 1996-2000
Artist Proof; Fourty-two prints on paper
(42)

Provenance

Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai

Literature

The Tree from the Seed: Contemporary Art from India, exhibition catalogue, Hovikodden, 2003 (unpaginated)
R. Hoskote, Itenerant Mythologies: Surendran Nair, Mumbai, 2009, pp. 146-159 (others from the edition illustrated)
Between the Lines: Identity, Place and Power, exhibition catalogue, Bangalore, 2012, pp. 110-111 (others from the edition illustrated)

Surendran Nair's works combine Indian and Greek mythology in dreamlike compositions which remind us of the surrealist artworks of Rene Magritte. This beautiful set of 42 hand-coloured prints lets the viewer dive into a surrealist world of obscure creatures and landscapes, where the artist captures the unusual and the worrying in his scrupulous observation of objects of the most banal, everyday reality.

Exhibited

Mumbai, Sakshi Gallery, SPIN, 2000
New Delhi, Atelier 2221; Baroda, Nazar Gallery, The Labyrinth of Eternal Delight, 1997 (others from the edition exhibited)
Hovikodden, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, The Tree from the Seed: Contemporary Art from India, 2003
New Delhi, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Is it what you think?, 2014 (others from the edition exhibited)

Further details

My work is informed by history, mythology, real and imaginary events, art history, notions of tradition and identity and its relationship with modernity, language, sexuality, politics, and other faiths, etc. Without emphasizing any of these in particular, I address these issues simultaneously. I create a vocabulary of images that are fed from a variety of sources and this offers me rich and diverse parables of reference to structure connectives and marry evocative associations of meaning. The images are often like cryptic clues, which assist one to decode the invested meaning that is disguised through oblique and elaborate devices of representation.
SURENDRAN NAIR

Descriptif du lot

Surendran Nair's works combine Indian and Greek mythology in dreamlike compositions which remind us of the surrealist artworks of René Margritte. This beautiful set of 42 hand-coloured prints lets the viewer dive into a surrealist world of obscure creatures and landscapes, where the artist captures the unusual and the worrying in his scrupulous observation of objects of the most banal, everyday reality.

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