KALEIDOSCOPE OF TIME | By Viraj Khanna

by Chivas Glassware at Snowball Studios

Saturday, May 6, 2023

For an artist time is the most abstract concept. The making of a piece of art isn’t always linear. It can be a continuous making and unmaking, it can be a progression that doesn’t seem to display any direct evolution - flowing between thoughts, concepts, contexts, and mediums.

Viraj represents this beautiful chaos of an artist, unrestrained and bold. He began at a point of mere ideation, images taken and put together in surreal collages leading to borrowed outcomes. Eventually they began molding into original narratives that resonated somewhere deep, prompting further experimentation with canvas, sculpture, and textile. The question that comes to mind is whether the latest medium is an indicator of time passing or a mere milestone in the meandering of a creative expression. The artist moves in and out and back and forth in the imagined multi-dimensional world within him. Each work leading him to the other until he finds himself returning to the very fundamental point. The passage of time is merely an outward reality. For an artist, each idea exists both individually in its history of making but also collectively in a symbiotic form.

The works displayed here are taken from the very beginning of his journey as an artist up until where he currently finds his practice at. None of them are pieces solely devoted to a contextual time, but instead have formed the layers that were necessary for it all to come into being now. This isn’t a retrospective, it is a coming together, a kaleidoscope, of all that has been and is becoming in his art. For a moment as you gaze at this wall you will see that there isn’t a beginning nor an end, just a space where the artist is seen and so is the viewer.

Sanjana Shah