‘Half-life’ by Aditya Pande

A new series of works by talented emerging artist of India, Aditya Pande, at Chatterjee and Lal consists of a suite of mixed media on paper works and a video. In this major new series, entitled ‘Half-life’, he has teased out a multiplicity of meaning, re-wiring familiar imagery to be read as something quite other.

The works present variations on a constant substructure: the joining of the circle with the semi circle, the full with its half. At the same time the interpretation of the semi circle and circle can also be the command or function, DO.

The artist is fond of word puzzles and the idea of the encrypted repeats itself throughout the present exhibition. Decoding individual works is not possible in any linear sense; instead one may begin to sense a common grammar beginning to emerge within the context of the whole exhibition. This manifests itself, for example, in pictorial elements that will morph from one work into newly imagined forms in another.

The references from which he draws are hugely diverse and include the fields of science, mathematics, semiotics and the history of art and design. This is his second solo show in Mumbai. Aditya Pande was born in Lucknow, raised in Chandigarh, trained at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, and currently lives in New Delhi. His studio production oscillates between the fine and applied arts, two and three dimensions, the sensuously tactile and the aggressively optical.

On the computer, Pande weaves a tangled web of synthetic line work, looping through grand arabesques and squiggling together skeins to form animals and people, elaborates a detailed note on him by the Cherry Art Foundation.

It adds, “These forms are anchored by bold blocks of skewed colors, usually applied with glossy enamel paints that contrast against the more powdery finish of the ink-jet print, sometimes further articulated by the appearance of an unblinking eyeball or a shiny nose. On occasion collage elements are mixed in, for a pleasingly demented farce that is the collusion of painting, print-making, graphic design and draftsmanship.”