Gallery Espace presents Boodi, meaning ‘ash’ in the Southern Indian language of Kannada.
Ash, an integral part of his recent practice, is at the centre of Iranna’s conceptual concerns in these works – not just as medium and a rich source of symbolic meaning drawn from ideas of philosophy and spiritualism, and social practice, but as the very residual matter of life, of all nature and the consciousness that pervades it.
Several of his recent paintings and sculptures depict trees. Looming like sentient beings in different colours, textures and forms, they stand for the dualities of nature and human artifice, spirituality and materiality, permanence and transience, darkness and light. Iranna paints these in layers of acrylic or pigment mixed with earth materials such as ash, coal or brick dust, giving the surface of his canvases a textural, palimpsest-like quality.
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