The recent paintings of P.R. Satheesh assume the form of large ensembles of gesture and colour, richly expressive – and peopled, when the viewer looks closely, by mysterious faces and masks. Even as we look at these paintings, they look back at us. We are transfixed by the many pairs of eyes in each frame. Seemingly flamboyant yet sophisticated in their technical control, Satheesh’s paintings propose a kinship with the historic corpus of New York School abstract expressionism, especially the art of Jackson Pollock, and also suggest an affinity with the work of the Danish Situationist painter Asger Jorn. Aligned with these paintings are a suite of drawings, rendered through a versatile line that evokes a series of quirky episodes animated by whimsy and enigma.
In the works that comprise his ongoing solo exhibition at Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, "FRENETIC", Satheesh explores an intriguing reconciliation of the seemingly opposed mandates of abstraction and figuration, while also drawing on his childhood memories of growing up in mountainous western Kerala, at the edge between cultivated land and the wilderness.
Born 1970 in Kerala, Satheesh attained a Bachelor's Degree in Painting from the Government College of Fine Arts in Trivandrum. He has participated in the 4th edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, curated by Anita Dube, Kochi, 2018-19. His works are in the collections of the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi and Kunstdepot Goeschenen, Switzerland.
