Sudhir Patwardhan comes a ‘Full Circle’

Sudhir Patwardhan’s new series of works are on display at at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai. They indicate a new directional shift for this keen observer of the intersection between the broad social and the narrow personal viewpoint. His captivating charcoal sketches and drawings point to an intimate engagement with ordinary people. His, artistic gaze is solely on urban life, and Mumbai’s public life, in particular. This time, it has trained itself inward.

Through his work he addresses issues of materiality, isolation and fragmentation. He engages with the chaotic cityscape and scenes from the bustling street with unmatched sensitivity and intensity. Analyzing his work, The New York Times art critic Holland Cotter, has mentioned in an essay:

“His painting might well be considered a form of Socialist Realism, sans ideological hard-sell or an agony-orecstasy tone. Instead, the artist depicts day to day, unprivileged urban lives with a solidity of form along with deliberateness of pacing, which imbue even crowd scenes with a ceremonial, moral weight."

His body of work ‘Citing the city’ (2007) at Sakshi Gallery served as another example of a constant dialogue his art has with society, representing the reality in a transparent manner. In his new series at the same venue, Sudhir Patwardhan depicts poignant scenes of life within apartment houses.

The title work (acrylic on canvas), ‘Full Circle’, arranges young and old members of a ubiquitous family in a peculiar fashion. The narrative that it suggests is more personal than a mere abstract engagement with the process of aging and death. The theme of enclosure recurs in a series of paintings on view.

A sense of playfulness seems to illumine the work that expertly interrogates fictionality through an assembly of a motley cast of characters and settings. Pulp Fiction fame Uma Thurman co-exists with a middle-aged woman seated by a bookshelf; a silhouetted gunman draws the eye to a nude figure, as if fleeing the edges of the canvas.