Show title: “Slipping Across the Universe”
| A Solo Exhibition by: PRANAV SHAH | Curated by: JOHNYML |
Catalogue Text
Aesthetical Abodes of Meditative Pleasures: The Art of Pranav Shah
I
Abstract is the essence. An abstract artist is the one who looks at the gross form, feels it in his soul and brings out the essence of it in his paintings through a highly personalized aesthetical mode. Often figurative art works are copied, style emulated and some works are even faked. But when it comes to abstract art, each work of art is a unique one. If any abstract art is imitated for its style, then one can be sure that it has an imitable pattern or design, therefore it has an ‘implicit figure’ in it, which is prone to imitation. A real abstract artist is the one who makes his art through inimitable styles; even he himself could not repeat the essence of his own previous work. What he does is the re-evocation of the feel, mood and the pleasure that one work of art gives. The more he does it, the more he feels the meditative pleasure. The world ceases for him as he creates one for himself to dwell. This aesthetical abode is repeated with tireless vigor and the ensemble of such abodes constitutes his oeuvre.
Pranav Shah believes in this making of an aesthetical abode where meditation lives with pleasure, feels with moods and living moments negotiate with the lived experiences. Born and brought up in a village, nearly eighty kilometers from the diamond and textile city of Surat, Gujarat, Pranav Shah wanted to become an artist early on and circumstances made him to pursue a course in Interior Design at the famous M S University of Baroda. The artist in him was always alert and he could set up a roaring business in the surging ecosystem of real-estate boom. More homes meant more interior aesthetics. Pranav Shah became a busy interior designer and, in each home, he added a unique aesthetical value in order to enhance beauty in the lives of those people who lived there.
As he started flourishing as a designer of home interiors, Pranav Shah started travelling abroad to attend various design expositions. First it was to Dubai and later on he visited the European countries. Visiting museums became a part of his itinerary and in Munich, Germany, as he stood before the works of Gerhard Richter, Pranav Shah knew what his real calling was. Richter has been an artist who has gone through various stylistic phases in his artistic career. What Pranav Shah saw was the phase of his abstracts which had a lot of horizontal hazy lines that smudged the internal structures to invisibility. Colors of India played before Pranav Shah’s eyes and he knew he had a natural inclination for such kind of art. Each visit took him to the works of Anselm Kiefer, Mark Rothko and the Abstract Expressionists.
However, his foray into making art full-time was quite impulsive. It was in 2005. Pranav Shah suddenly felt that he should have art materials at his studio where he designed the maquettes of the interiors. He went out and came back with a load of art materials and that was the beginning of it. About his sudden spur to art is explained by the artist in the following words: “By 2005, I felt a great calm in my life. I was personally satisfied. I did not know why I felt so. I thought I had given richness and happiness to my family. They are very caring and loving. I felt I could embark on a different journey which I had been postponing for many reasons. When I set the canvas on the easel and mixed oil paint with linseed oil, I knew my ship had already left the dock, carrying me along. Now I was in the sea and I had to navigate on my own. I knew my surroundings and my people. But in the canvas, I did not know anybody. I was to travel alone. With trembling hands and a pacing heart, I started my work and I knew that I could transfer my soul into my works.”
Pranav Shah’s paintings, as I mentioned at the outset, belong to the general category of abstract art. But they are spaces, though not representational in nature, that exist somewhere else in the world or in the cosmos. According to the artist, ‘these are the spaces in me.’ They are painterly spaces or spaces that evolve as he paints on. But his firm belief, that they could exist somewhere makes the works very intriguing as the viewers also would be led to search for similar spaces in their minds or in their dreams.
In 2012, Pranav Shah had his first solo exhibition at the Cymroza Art Gallery in Mumbai. It was called ‘Mars.’ The buzz about the planet Mars was all around and what the artist was doing at that time vibed well with the visual and textual information flooded in the public sphere regarding the findings on Mars. Pranav Shah, being an experimental artist, covered the floor of the gallery with silver foil and placed the works on the wall, giving a new experience to the viewers. The experientiality of his exhibition was well received by the Mumbai’s art lovers. They lapped up his treatment of colors; mostly monochromatic, rich in amber, reddish browns and blacks. ‘Mars’ gave Pranav Shah the required confidence for a debutant artist and colors started seeping into his works slowly and steadily. A flurry of exhibitions happened; in Ahmedabad, Baroda, Jehangir Gallery, Mumbai, Taj and New York.
Pranav Shah calls his New York solo in 2018 as the best solo exhibition he had so far. “Nobody knew who I was. The curator and gallery invited the guests. They came and they felt my works were exceptionally fresh and innovative. That appreciation which came from those people who had seen the best of international abstraction in the very birth place of abstract expressionism, meant a lot to me. Works were sold.” Pranav Shah feels that art, especially the abstract variety should not have any national borders. Artists and their art should be treated as international and they should be considered as producers of international culture. “If possible, in an exhibition, if the climate permits, all the artists should make their presence wearing three-piece suits.”
II
Pranav Shah’s works could be called ‘reflections’ in general. Otherwise, they all could remain ‘untitled.’ They are reflections because, from the apparent feel of their surfaces, these paintings seem to be reflecting the surroundings; a flowery garden, a clouded sky, a peacock, a forest in flames, a meadow in its vastness, an impressionistic landscape and so on. They could be ‘read’ as paintings that ‘reflect’ the minds of both the artist and the viewers. In that sense, these paintings are to be taken as the meeting points of the artist and the spectators. They become an interface of similar minds that vibe with the same feelings, developing an empathetic relationship between each other. Yet another meaning of reflections in this context takes us to a philosophical plane where higher and sublime thoughts about life and times are entertained. These paintings, therefore become the expressions of philosophical reflections done by the artist; a non-verbal thought to be shared and contemplated by the viewers.
Fundamentally speaking, the paintings of Pranav Shaha are visual fields that impart aesthetical feelings to the viewers. As far as the artist is concerned, these paintings remain to be a very personal expression of his thoughts and feelings, without taking the viewers into consideration. Once he frees the works into a larger area for perceiving, they become a common property, which are to be looked at, considered, deliberated in order to change the physicality of looking into an idea of feeling, eventually resulting into understanding and empathizing. Hence, these are works of art, visual repositories of experience. The question then arises is about the aspects of understanding. How does one understand a painting by Pranav Shah? Generally, a work of art is understood for the ‘meaning’ that it imparts. It either happens through its own intrinsic narrative structure or its contextual setting. When it comes to Pranav Shah’s works, they are neither narrative nor contextually set.
Deconstructing the paintings of Pranav Shah’s works could be done through two methods; one, the viewers have to take them as visual fields created by an artist whose aim is to express a state of mind through periodical reliving of it and by building a visual field through layers of paints and their aesthetical manipulations. Two, they should be seen as ‘reflections’ that could evoke similar visual styles and moods in the minds of the viewers. In the former case, we could see his works as a process, a constant arrival and departure until a point of aesthetical satisfaction is achieved. According to the artist, he takes three to four months to finish a work as he simultaneously works on different sized canvases. Separated from the din of daily life, he isolates himself for many hours in his studio and approaches a painting as if he were doing it for the first time. What happens in this process is that the layers that existed so far become the primary ‘layer’ or foundation and using a lot of linseed oil and turpentine Pranav Shah makes a fresh attempt on the pictorial surface, with all his mind focused on getting into the same state of mind which facilitated the earlier layers.
This process is a mindful one as far as a meditative state of mind is concerned, but at the same time physically laborious as Pranav Shah has to bring back the previously experienced meditative state and execute them in painterly terms. The artist, like we, understands that one cannot get the same mood or state of mind when he approaches the work in regular gaps. So, what we see in these resultant paintings are the varying shades of the same state of mind, like a note played in slightly varying frequencies and timbre, giving birth to a beautiful piece of music which could reflect the changing times. The paintings of Pranav Shah contain these changing notes, minimal ones that need careful ears and eyes to capture. That’s why, to view the details of his works, one should take the help of a magnifying glass. Each stroke by the artist has resulted into the creation of a set of visual waves that make unexpected ruptures, rhythms and hues. Had they been done in one stretch such layered experiences and visual nuances would not have come out so well.
The second method is about seeing the works of Pranav Shah as ‘reflections.’ These paintings are open to such interpretations as the artist and curator do not want to fix the visual text within a singular frame of reference. These works are to be treated as open visual texts for retinal pleasure as well as intellectual and verbal interpretations. Reflections, taken as whole, mirror nature and its wonders. Pranav Shah has been a lover of nature and he keeps looking at the Tapti River that flows by his studio. The slow flowing river has innumerable waves that change shape and frequency depending on the wind speed during certain times of the day. Pranav Shah takes these waves as his visual reference and his aim is to capture them on his canvases. The very same river changes its colors as the sky displays a festival of colors by evening. Consciously or subconsciously these changes are reflected in his paintings.
From canvases, Pranav Shah has moved to other materials such as metal sheets. They are foil-thin metallic sheets made for industrial purposes. Incorporating them into the creation of his visual art scheme has made some considerable changes in his aesthetics. So far, he has created paintings on silver and golden metallic sheets and each of the painting has a very special sheen in appearance. As the background does not play a dominant role in the final outcome of the paintings, their sheen gives and added glow to the oil color layers that Pranav Shah uses. His experiments with materials have also taken him to terracotta slab reliefs and metal wire sculptures, both expressing his concerns for ethereal and exotic life forms and linguistic structures. This interest with undecipherable linguistic structures and exotic life forms is also very evident in his paintings.
JohnyML
New Delhi
November, 2025