Rahul Kumar
Born in 1976 and based in NCR of Delhi, Rahul Kumar, a Fulbright Scholar, holds a Masters' Degree from the University of Dallas (Texas). He has held nine solo shows of his works in both India and the United States. He is a Charles Wallace grantee and the India Foundation for the Arts fellow. His artistic practice starts with clay, often combined with other materials into large constructions and installations, exploring ideas of dichotomies and the tension between the physical and the cerebral. He is a three-time recipient of the AIFACS National Award and a Junior Fellowship for Excellence in the Field of Visual Arts by the Government of India. Rahul was part of the first Indian Ceramic Triennale in 2018. His works are displayed at the ongoing edition of The Sculpture Park at Madhavendra Palace, Nahargarh Fort (Jaipur), curated by Peter Nagy. Rahul is part of prestigious collections including the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. He is an art journalist, writing and editing on global visual art practices.
...the recent corpus of works, made through the pandemic years and subsequent lockdowns are visually and conceptually nowhere close to his previous projects. Having relinquished for the time, both colour and gloss, and the aesthetics of the seductive surface, one is moved, rather hit hard by the peculiar and enigmatic quality of Rahul's objects. They mark a radical shift from 'digging the earth' to the 'digging of the mind' with his medium now behaving as a tool to excavate the deeper, sometimes dark corners of one's inner being, dormant with memories and secrets, hiding as if, the 'untold' that resides somewhere in it. The beauty of the work is in its imperfections, its tattered and torn shards exuding a rugged tactility. Perhaps this is a moment of true liberation for Rahul as he has broken the bound of the pot and its flesh to traverse the terrain of the non-objective, where matter is made to speak through its affect bearings and often without the compulsions of remaining contained within a recognizable form.
The container still exists in some works, sometimes separately made, multiple small pots, squished by hand when still moist and fresh (titled Matrix), making an introverted turning within. Out of shape, they present an unfamiliar story. Subsequently, the container appears in the form of an appropriated corrugated cardboard box or as an intimate treasure box held close to the chest, with some torn letters bursting out while most remain sunken within. They speak of time, they mark the bygones as buried, eaten away by insects or partially destroyed. They reveal moods of anger, some hurt, some indifference, but nevertheless, they still speak of something. They hold some suspense for us, the viewer, as they induce us to conjecture and address the conundrum.
Rahul plays out new configurations of space and form, taking our focus in and out of stacks, piles and grids, and to heaps of letters un-read, partially burnt or shredded, closed and concealed.
