“Conjecture: to believe on uncertain or tentative grounds.”

Nature Morte is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by the collaborative duo of Thukral & Tagra in our Vasant Vihar gallery space.

For the past decade, the artists have been exploring issues such as internal migration and emigration, the nature of ephemerality, the social realities of the Indian populace, and the strategies of survival of the dispossessed. Their newest body of work entitled “Conjecture” looks at the multiple levels of uncertainty that are now our collective reality and articulates feelings of vulnerability, immediacy, imbalance, and uncertainty. New large-scale paintings depict synthetic landscapes which seem to be caught in a cataclysm: gravity is non-existent, parameters are dissolving, infinity is the given norm, and the only inhabitants are either robotic or generated from an immaterial digital realm. These planetary supports are reminiscent of table-tennis structures, implying a sense of both play and constant motion to these scenarios. The artists hope to address the urgent issues of our day:

“The viewer's journey is precarious, as at any moment it threatens to slip or melt between the gaps of time and space. The ideas of aspirations and anxiety propel us to see the plausible future. The spaces between the matter indicate fragmented nature and the resultant instability of our morphing reality. The only silver lining to the self-drawn borders is living in the moment that forms into new ones.

But the questions persist:
What changes did you bring for yourself, your home, your behavior, at work? For society at large?”

Jiten Thukral was born in 1976 in Jalandhar, Punjab, and received a BFA from Chandigarh College of Art and his MFA from the Delhi College of Art. Sumir Tagra was born in 1979 in New Delhi, and received a BFA from the Delhi College of Art and later studied at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra work collaboratively with a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, installations, interactive games, video, performance and design. Thukral & Tagra work on new formats of public engagement and attempt to expand the scope of what art can do. They break out of the mediated and disciplinary world and create multi-modal sensory and immersive environments. Their earlier work dealt with tropes of migration and motifs of a globally manifested consumer culture. It questioned the provenance of Indian identity and its various articulations. Their recent work has dealt with the interpretation of Indian mythological narratives and symbols in ways that renew and enliven a largely pedantic and static area of cultural material. From a pop visual character to a predominantly abstract visual approach and compositional philosophy, Thukral & Tagra constantly shift in terms of their grammar and vocabulary. The abstract suggestions of an everyday experience of architecture and urban design in Gurgaon (Haryana, India) and Chandigarh (Punjab, India) is embedded in their visual language. They have offered socio-political commentary that is implicit in their aesthetic for the past eighteen years.