Indrapramit Roy

Overview

Roy’s engagement with painting has always been with materiality; right from his very early experiments, his journey into multiple and shaped canvases, the corrugated cardboard carton period, and lately in his combination of drawing, marking, painting and overlaying actions that mark his watercolour series.

The artist takes away the human agency as the prime actors of the drama, but the human presence is everywhere. His spaces are frozen moments of cinematic tension that goes much beyond photo-based mediatic realism. These everyday spaces carry the empathy of intimacy achieved through experiences and memories. They seem to want to tell a story and stay silent about what the story could be. A sense of silence, of foreboding, a hint of violence lurks just behind the surface of the quotidian.

Mezzaterra means common ground. It is an imagined territory, an idea, but a very real and pervasive one, where echoes and reflections add depth and perspective, where identities are malleable and overlapping and not clear cut and well defined, where binaries are not the only defining theme. Inhabiting the mezzaterra means one is both inside and outside of language, of culture and the stance can be both critical and empathetic.

Note

Sometime in 2019 I went to see a cactus garden. They wanted us to create a mural there that will accommodate both a stylised representation of the cacti and a realistic one of our political masters on the same wall! An idea replete with unacknowledged ironies. I took a good look and documented some of the specimens on display of these strange looking, hardy, adaptive plants known to survive in harsh conditions where little else can. These cacti come in all shapes and sizes and often display perfect geometry and stunning patterns of form that invites touch but for the visible hostility the spikey thorns! ‘Spine’ is what these thorns are called technically and touch you must not! The attraction and repulsion, the lure laced with danger that resides even in the smallest specimens is hard to overlook.

Then the pandemic hit us with its full force and stopped life, as we knew it. Initially it all seemed like a temporary short term measure but as the days rolled into weeks, weeks into months, several new words quickly entered into our ever-expanding vocabulary, a realisation dawned that perhaps some things are going to change for good. There are so many imponderables but one thing is certain that there is no certainty worth talking about! It perhaps allows for a pause, a dot in time to reflect and even a possibility to hit the reset button – nobody knows. Things presumed to be normal are liable to change with a very short notice in the new normal. The images in this set chose to come tumbling out at that moment, almost on their own and that is all there is!

Biography

Indrapramit Roy was born in 1964. He studied printmaking (BFA) at the Visva-Bharati University of Santiniketan (1982-87) and painting (MFA, 1987-89) at the Faculty of Fine Arts of M.S.University of Baroda, India. Subsequently he was awarded Inlaks Scholarship to study MA Painting (1990-92) at the Royal College of Art, London, which included a term at Cite des Arts, Paris. He also spent a term in Berlin on an Erasmus Exchange Scholarship.

Indrapramit has exhibited widely across Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Baroda, and Chennai in both solo and group shows. He has presented sixteen solo exhibitions, participated in over ninety group exhibitions, and contributed to several art camps and workshops. Among his solo shows, notable rsolo exhibitions include shows at Galerie-88, Kolkata (2015 and 2012), Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai (February 2008), Aicon Gallery, USA (May 2007), and The Anant Art Gallery, New Delhi (2009 and 2006).

He has participated in group exhibitions in New York, London, Melbourne, and Yangon, and has represented India at the Asian Art Exhibition in Macao as well as the Cairo Biennale, Cairo. In 2013, he completed a 12 × 26 feet mural for Terminal 2 of the new Mumbai International Airport (now rechristened as Jai Ho Museum) and also served as Artist-in-Residence at The Siena Art Institute (March 2013). His honours and fellowships include the Fulbright Fellowship, USA (2004–2005), the Government of India Junior Research Fellowship (1993–1995), the Inlaks Scholarship (1990–1992), and the Kanoria Centre Fellowship (1989–1990).

His recent exhibitions include Reflecting the Self at Threshold Art Gallery, New Delhi (2023) and Indrapramit Roy: Soliloquy at Threshold Art Gallery, New Delhi (2022). He has also participated in major art fairs, including Art Mumbai (2024) and the India Art Fair (2022).

Indrapramit has been teaching painting at his alma mater- Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU, Baroda since 1995, and presently is an Associate Professor and the Dean of Students.

He lives and works in Vadodara, continuing to contribute to both pedagogy and practice.