Important Notice

In Conversation, Nataraj Sharma paints a spectral scene - two men in chairs, suspended through space, share a table with food and drinks. Their presence is like a fluid dream amongst a structured heap of industrial ruin. A formlessness of space trickles out into the logic of the rigid elements; it is a dynamic that Sharma frequently explores in his works. "The representation of the human form trapped within structures larger and more... In Conversation, Nataraj Sharma paints a spectral scene - two men in chairs, suspended through space, share a table with food and drinks. Their presence is like a fluid dream amongst a structured heap of industrial ruin. A formlessness of space trickles out into the logic of the rigid elements; it is a dynamic that Sharma frequently explores in his works. "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 of machinery and factories, a theme which functions as a central trope in his practice. Sometimes the artist presents these machines as contradictory objects which on the one hand adhere to the logic of orderliness and productivity and on the other to the whimsy and playfulness of artistic fancy" (Grant Watson, "Simulated Realities and Virtual Experience", Voices of Change - 20 Indian Artists, Marg Foundation, Mumbai, 2010, pg. 102).

Sharma's fascination with machines began when he went to Baroda, Gujarat, in 1994 to teach art, and encountered construction and upheaval in a rapidly gentrifying city. He was interested in the transformed and transgressed landscape, and the mechanisms behind it. In his own words: "Objects have a still life, a permanence and a consistency that stands in contrast to the fickleness of human exchange. Look at objects and they look back without blinking...They say: 'Reveal us and we will reveal you.'" (Ibid., pg. 113).

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site