For a 2024 exhibition in Mumbai (for which I wrote a catalog essay), Sangram Majumdar explored the distinction between visceral presence and reminiscence’s shadow, in addition to the double state of consciousness that’s inherent in having to continually realign right here and there. Born in India, he moved to the US along with his household when he was 13. He’s acutely conscious that he’s neither at house nor a whole stranger to 2 advanced cultures and histories. It’s that unstable, in-between area that he continues to discover within the 13 oil work and one wall drawing, relationship from 2022 to 2025, on view in The Sleep of Purpose, at Natalie Karg Gallery.
For a lot of his profession, Majumdar, an artist I’ve lengthy recognized and coated, and included in a present I curated, was an observational painter with a broad formal vary, encompassing all the pieces from extremely achieved representational work to summary photographs grounded in direct statement. These items, created via layers and fragments, invited extended trying whereas resisting interpretation. Their inchoateness mirrored his inside state of vulnerability, and the will to be seen somewhat than projected upon.
Sangram Majumdar, “monstermash 4” (2025), oil on canvas
Constructing upon the work within the 2024 present, his present items are a dense bricolage of numerous sources, together with photographs derived from utilizing strips of various coloured tape to convey the awkwardness of his little one studying to stroll, in addition to gestures present in Western artwork, Persian miniatures, Indian people artwork, and mass media. By finding out photographs from totally different cultures and epochs, he has found a coherence of which means assigned to explicit expressions throughout many cultures, and has remoted others which are particular to geographic areas and custom, equivalent to Hindu artwork.
By bringing collectively assorted full and partial photographs and painterly passages, Majumdar has created layered and fractured areas through which his figures exist. Relying on what he’s pursuing, his work has featured abstraction, cartoon-like imagery, figures, and ornamental patterning, typically in a single composition. His strategy appears to be pushed by the will to carry collectively the numerous totally different points of his twin Indian-American id, alongside along with his recognition that it’s tough to separate the private from the political. Can he inhabit each identities? What does it imply to take action?
Sangram Majumdar, “The Meeting” (2022), oil on canvas
“The Meeting” (2022), which Majumdar made in response to Gustave Courbet’s “The Meeting, or Bonjour Monsieur Courbet” (1854), facilities on a shirtless brown-skinned man carrying pink shorts, Majumdar’s self-portrait. Courbet’s piece depicts an opportunity encounter between the artist, his canine, Breton, his servant, Calas, and his pal and most essential patron, Alfred Bruyas. Till Courbet’s revolutionary work, group portraits within the European custom had been largely composed of figures posing in a room. Nothing was spontaneous or improvised. After I first noticed Majumdar’s portray in 2023, I interpreted it solely via the lens of the 1854 portray. I later realized that my studying was too slender and that it has little to do with patronage, which was Courbet’s topic.
In “The Meeting,” Majumdar’s left hand extends ahead from his chest, about coronary heart peak, greeted by an summary, semi-transparent yellow form that I noticed as a gloved hand. Is it coming from a composite determine that we can’t determine? The artist, seen in profile, directs his gaze towards an unknowable area between the viewer and the compounded, summary determine. Caught between two disparate cultures, he doesn’t know what to have a look at or absorb; his mouth is open, bewildered.
Sangram Majumdar, “Collaborators I” (2025), oil on canvas
Majumdar needs viewers to really feel a few of his conflicted place in ways in which appear recent. In “Collaborators I” (2025), he depicts a girl in a jungle-like setting, amongst tropical leaves. She wears what appears to be like like a grey skirt that reaches to the portray’s backside edge and a flowery pink and violet shirt. Is she standing or kneeling. What does the upward gesture of arms and palms signify?
What I discover most engrossing concerning the work is that the lady’s head is all black, and Majumdar has painted a small blue dot close to the middle of it. Is her face turned away from us, revealing her darkish hair? Or is she at all times hidden to us? The problem of visibility, and what it means, turns into the portray’s topic. Equally mysterious are a number of pairs of disembodied eyes peering out at us in “Voice Over” (2025). Are they benign or harmful? Seemingly aimed in all instructions, at what are they really trying? How and what can we and so they see, and why are they staring?
As he explores his id from a number of views, what roads can Majumdar journey down and what territory can he discover? These questions are central to his formidable venture.
Sangram Majumdar, “Voice Over” (2025), oil on canvas
Sangram Majumdar: The Sleep of Purpose continues at Nathalie Karg Gallery (127 Elizabeth Road, Decrease East Aspect, Manhattan) although October 6. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
