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Lot 44

 

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According to Ranjit Hoskote, "Padamsee has almost always treated portraiture as a pretext, approaching it only to leave it behind. His aim is to allude to the human face in the border zone between likeness and presence, an aim he shares with the Byzantine iconographers of the 6th and 7th centuries AD, who were similarly preoccupied with the reconciliation of numinous spirit with recognisable body. Padamsee dwells on the fascination with one's... According to Ranjit Hoskote, "Padamsee has almost always treated portraiture as a pretext, approaching it only to leave it behind. His aim is to allude to the human face in the border zone between likeness and presence, an aim he shares with the Byzantine iconographers of the 6th and 7th centuries AD, who were similarly preoccupied with the reconciliation of numinous spirit with recognisable body. Padamsee dwells on the fascination with one's own face that one experiences on looking into the mirror. He develops this primal moment of narcissism into an invocation to the enduring mystery in the glass: the double, an image that is clearly oneself yet beyond reach on the other side of the glass, and by looking at which we image that most powerful index of the encounter between the 'I' and the 'Other', the face???Thus, the face marks the site of many encounters and identifications for Padamsee???In gazing at these apparently remote figures, we confront our own predicaments, are returned to the loom of time" ("The Ricochet of the Line", Akbar Padamsee: Drawings, Watercolours, Photographs, Pundole Art Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2004, p. 4, 5).

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