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Ranbir Kaleka's paintings present a mélange of recognizable objects and scenes from everyday life, which are infused with a surrealist haze. He works with different materials - canvas and paper, oil and acrylic and mix media - producing scenes that seem real and fleeting at the same time. These works have an otherworldly quality, the smooth lines negotiate the surface, merging and emerging, luring the viewer into the scene. The colours also have... Ranbir Kaleka's paintings present a mélange of recognizable objects and scenes from everyday life, which are infused with a surrealist haze. He works with different materials - canvas and paper, oil and acrylic and mix media - producing scenes that seem real and fleeting at the same time. These works have an otherworldly quality, the smooth lines negotiate the surface, merging and emerging, luring the viewer into the scene. The colours also have a fantastical quality, which only heightens the viewer's sensory experience.

The present lot is one of the works produced for the artist's 2009 New York exhibition, Reading Man. Here, the artist further develops his vocabulary of figurative painting, which employs an intricate form of narrative realism. Each of his characters inhabits a singular universe replete with personal histories and habits. It seems like the central protagonist of the work inhabits a space that is not from our world. The landscape is created for the sole purpose of being inhabited by the character. The two entities are so seamlessly connected, it would be impossible to disconnect one from the other, making the painted scene seem real via this process of mutual validation.

Each of the four works included in the exhibition Reading Man, present a central figure endowed with multiple narrative possibilities. The figure in this painting, titled Ochre Dust in a Delusional Paradise, with skin like translucent porcelain, stands as a beacon of narcissism as battle tanks approach in the distance. He seems lost in his existence, preoccupied and oblivious to the emerging and fading realities that surround him.

Since 1999, Kaleka has been working with video projections on painted canvases to intensify his narratives and add new dimensions to his process of storytelling. The other work by the artist included in this sale evidences his practice of merging multiple media - like painting, video and sound - to invite the viewer to animate the story in their imagination. The current painting, even though created in a single, traditional format, similarly invites the viewer to participate in the process of storytelling by entering the recesses of its surrealist landscape where anything is possible.

During an interview in 2012 Kaleka vividly explained that his sheltered upbringing and childhood interactions, almost exclusively with family members, led him to observe things and experiences more intently. As a child, the artist's play was built on tales, mirrors and their reflections, shadows and their movements. He drew comfort in their complexities, a trait that reflects in his work to date. He went on to speak of his family as story-tellers, either inventing or relating stories true to their character and personal fantasies. He said his imagery does not appear to acknowledge linear order or chronology; events overlap and beings are dense and contorted ("A Play of Shadows and Reflections that Impresses on the Visual Imagery of Ranbir Kaleka", Saffronart Blog, 11 September 2012, accessed August 2013).

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