The work of Calcutta-born, Berlin- based Sarnath Banerjee sits between art and literature, constantly seeking a balance between image and text. His bold and often bittersweet comic- strip works explore the common experiences of a rapidly changing world. Banerjee’s latest suite of drawings, commissioned by Deutsche Bank for their offices in London, and which will be displayed in their Lounge at Frieze London, is a series of works that has been designed to be printed onto wallpaper for the large-scale walls in the office, rendered in a clean and distinct style. Embedded in these refined images are passages of writing; the images move between being illustrations of these texts and more speculative renderings of ideas. Banerjee offers not didactic assertions but chains of associations, sometimes signalled more explicitly (certain historical figures recur), sometimes more subtly. His themes are gardens, the changing wilderness, and, he says, ‘the loosely articulated preoccupations of my life – the restless wanderer, the uncanny, the uncertain.’
TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ZONES – Sarnath Banerjee
DNA, July 26, 2014
