An artist who looks to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown

Antonio Puri’s art is his means of identifying with the universe.  Therefore, he often uses symbols, forms, and spatial concern as a means to express his need for universality. His inspiration comes from the unity between the microscopic and the macrocosmic.

In fact, his painting process is also designed to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown.  By using materials that resist one another, he is able to reveal several layers of paints, which would ordinarily get covered up.  Introducing a hybrid of techniques, symbols and various mediums, he is hoping to create Oneness.

"Despite proliferation of geometric shapes on Puri’s canvases, they pulsate with energy that lies beneath, and again and again, pick up seemingly random lines, squiggles or even graffiti like marks that lie strewn around. Moments of chance encounter with intentional planning and meticulous orchestration of pictorial effects. If emotions can be re-imagined as ‘ownerless’ and dissociated from ego, Puri captures it via the universal language of line, shape, color and forms in our “post-ethnic world”.

The above excerpt from an essay by Parul Dave Mukherji, associated with the department of Visual Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, sums up the spirit of his art practice. Puri has had over a dozen solo exhibitions worldwide and is in numerous museum collections. His work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, among several other periodicals. He has done residencies in Bulgaria, South Africa, Serbia, Mauritius, and Romania.

Puri grew up in the Himalayas, He currently lives and works in Philadelphia, USA. Reviewing his abstract paintings, Donald Kuspit has mentioned: “He  is well-positioned to take the Buddhist path--the most important revolution in attitude and concept that abstract painting has had since its implicitly Christian beginnings.  The recurrent circle in his work conveys this completeness and interrelatedness, even as it suggests the self-containment that results from constant consciousness of them.  They are mandalas awash with color, drips and undulating splashes of paint. The artistic issue is how Puri spiritualizes his paint--how he makes the mundane material of paint ³vibrate² spiritually, that is, convey the cosmic consciousness he associates with Buddhism.  He is clearly an abstract expressionist.”

After having several exhibitions worldwide, CENTERED is his debut show in India.