Amitabh Kumar's Art Is A Meta-Reimagination Of Time, Space, & The Human Experience

Amitabh Kumar's body of work is a response to the everyday and emotional charge it carries through time.
Amitabh Kumar's body of work is a response to the everyday and emotional charge it carries through time.Amitabh Kumar

Amitabh Kumar's mastery of capturing emotions and experiences through his illustrations has established him as a rising star in the global urban art scene. Drawing inspiration from the rich cultural imaginaries of Bangalore, his work transcends representation, evoking affect and recreating the angularity of human experiences. Through graphic storytelling, Amitabh defies sequential narratives, crafting composites that collapse time and space into meta-images.

The mural of a hen at a dump yard in Delhi and the headless beast mural at Tughlaqabad Landfill.
The mural of a hen at a dump yard in Delhi and the headless beast mural at Tughlaqabad Landfill.The Better India, XXL Gallery

Based in Bangalore, Amitabh Kumar's body of work is a response to the everyday and emotional charge it carries through time. Rather than simply representing these currents, Amitabh seeks to recreate the affect they produce within him. This tension between representation and affect plays a pivotal role in his artistic practice and the way he approaches storytelling as a craft. Some examples are the crushing claustrophobia of the chickens that are industrially commodified under the belief of humans' assumed superiority over other species, or the stagnant presence of a colossal, lifeless entity that is the Tughlaqabad Landfill, which he depicts through a headless beast on the brink of collapse.

Amitabh Kumar's body of work is a response to the everyday and emotional charge it carries through time.
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In recent years, Amitabh Kumar has been honing his skills in the art of graphic storytelling. Through this medium, he explores his relationship with space and time, uncovering alternative ways to chart the world. His practice can be seen as an ongoing experiment to discover and locate new tropes. Amitabh employs structures, figures, strategies, and styles within the comic book format, taking the narrative in a non-sequential direction to explore a multi-dimensional experience.

Amitabh Kumar's body of work is a response to the everyday and emotional charge it carries through time.
Amitabh Kumar's body of work is a response to the everyday and emotional charge it carries through time.Amitabh Kumar

Amitabh Kumar's artistic practice is fluid and adaptable. His stories are not bound by a singular form or medium but rather evolve as projects. Each narrative is rooted in a specific idea that the artist is contemplating at a given moment. These ideas manifest in various forms and media, providing Amitabh the freedom to experiment and explore different creative avenues. By embracing this variability, he infuses freshness and dynamism into his work, inviting viewers to embark on a visual journey that transcends traditional boundaries.

You can follow Amitabh here.

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