Important Notice

Nataraj Sharma's works allude to the unpredictable yet inevitable confluences of nature, civilisation and industrialisation, often revealing complex interactions. The artist moved to Vadodara in 1994 to teach art, and encountered construction and upheaval in a rapidly gentrifying city. He was interested in the "transgressed and transforming landscape" and the mechanisms behind it. (Grant Watson, "Simulated Realities and Virtual Experience,"... Nataraj Sharma's works allude to the unpredictable yet inevitable confluences of nature, civilisation and industrialisation, often revealing complex interactions. The artist moved to Vadodara in 1994 to teach art, and encountered construction and upheaval in a rapidly gentrifying city. He was interested in the "transgressed and transforming landscape" and the mechanisms behind it. (Grant Watson, "Simulated Realities and Virtual Experience," Voices of Change: 20 Indian Artists, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2010, p. 113)

At the centre of the symmetrical composition in the present lot stands a local man, disproportionately tall, presumably from the Gujarati village of Jambughoda - merely two hours from Vadodara at the foothills of the Vindhyas. According to Watson (p. 102), "the representation of the human form trapped within structures larger and more powerful than itself takes on a sense of the monumental in Sharma's many paintings." The architecture of the setting seems to suggest opulence, possibly a wing of the historic Jambughoda Palace, which has been partially converted into a hotel and is located in the midst of nature with a wildlife sanctuary nearby. Sharma has created other similar works in which animals or humans stand alone against an elaborate backdrop, reiterating the artist's preoccupation with confronting the collision between nature and the manmade environment.

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