UNDER THE SKIN

Sunil Kumar Sree is a young artist from Chennai, nurtured in the contemporary tread of abstraction which is dominant in Chennai. His large oeuvre of work deals with recycling tangible objects like train tickets into a large abstract compositions. Conceptual ideas like a video recording of seed growing in a condom, shot in time lapse and displayed on a small flat screen TV monitor.

During his 1.Shanthiroad Artist Residency, Sunil Kumar Sree has been exploring the concept of the skin as a sheath, cover or a container. By focusing on his skin he draws our attention to birthmarks, wounds and abrasions that are part of his own identity and body/landscape. In the process of pushing his limits into another dimension the artist uses the canvases as a cube or a container. This is seen emptying used paper cups with marks, crushed and is memory of a gesture of time calculated by the change of matter.

Sunil’s exploration have been using the limitations of abstractions into another realm. Here the process of mark making becomes a gesture of using fragmented lines to mark time. The play with materials gives it another dimension opening a new window to the process of exploration. Another motif of the skin is rebirth or renewal. The ability to shed it's old skin when outgrown. The casting off of this skin metaphorically, represents the letting go of old ways and looking at the fresh new skin which is seen as a new beginning. 

In the Southern Indian context skin is associated with identity; its colour can suggest Dravidian ancestry of dark complexion. It has also been a signifier of racial and caste politics. In Sunil’s new work there is an attempt to get under the skin of the matter and probe its boundaries and displays the self through the surface and explores the fragility of the body and it’s memory through the skin as canvas.

Suresh Jayaram

1Shanthiroad Studio Space

Sunil’s project is part of the Young artist residency supported by VAC- Visual Art Collective Trust