SANDEEP MUKHERJEE, SISTER

Christopher Miles, Artforum, January 27, 2006
Since 1997, when he was studying for his MFA at UCLA, Sandeep Mukherjee has exhibited subtly dynamic drawings made by embossing Duralene—a stiff, vellumlike material—with motifs of flowers, leaves, starbursts, and rippling water. Populating these works are faint yet precise pencil drawings of the nude figure of the artist strolling, floating, or hurtling through dreamlike space. Mukherjee has deviated from his successful formula only occasionally, making his latest offering all the more surprising and impactful.

 

Sister played host to just a few works, all untitled, and all from 2004 or 2005. One large piece dominated the narrow downstairs space. Eight feet high and nearly twenty-five feet across, it is made up of five sheets of the artist’s signature material. Each Duralene panel is embossed with lines that radiate from a single point, creating a system of shallow, refractive, hard-edged furrows. The lines in each panel make sudden, hard turns as they meet those of the neighboring section, resulting in a stuttering linear progression across all five. With the loose delicacy of crepe paper wound around the spokes of a bicycle wheel, rings of color spiral out from each epicenter. These are applied with felt and Q-tips in acrylic ink that maintains a sense of fluidity and captures the luminosity of the support. The density of the ink is varied, creating a modulated glow further punctuated by painted spots of light. The results are like passages of music, each capitalizing on, colluding with, complicating, and in subtle ways even compromising or contradicting the others. Introducing a little discord into this negotiated harmony, all five monochrome spirals—in shades of indigo, burgundy, brown, and green—are truncated even as they appear to expand.

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