(b. 1968, lives and works in Mumbai, India)
Sunil Padwal’s art practice reflects on the unsettling nature of contemporary urban life through a series of complex drawings. The artist suggests that not only are we unable to escape from the grip of our everyday reality, we have also become passive observers, unable to question our experiences. The drawings layer abstract lines and forms with simplified architectural imagery. Placed in rescued frames, Padwal’s drawings replace the original, photographic contented of the frames. This multiple layering recreates an environment under construction, partly built and partly destroyed where both the past and the future are equally struggling to emerge.
Padwal’s work of drawing, photography and the intervention of the purely visual into the tactile universe of objects is part of a long-standing exploration into his personal and emotional experience of the urban environments that frame his life journey. His layering of different categories, textures, images, words, materials begins and continues the journey of creating a vocabulary and a language with which to format the visible and its resonances with our emotional lives.
Padwal’s recent exhibitions include his solo show at GALLERYSKE, Bangalore (2019); and participations in ‘No Place like the Present’ curated by Ranjit Hoskote, at Akara Art, Mumbai (2019), Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016 curated by Sudarshan Shetty; ‘Public Enemy Number’ curated by Shaheen Merali in Exhibit 320, Delhi (2010).
Artist website: http://www.sunilpadwal.com/