FUGITIVE DUST
M. Pravat
Curated by Sabih Ahmed
March 6 - August 29, 2021
VHC is pleased to present Fugitive Dust, a solo exhibition of works by M. Pravat.
Curated by Sabih Ahmed, the exhibition features artworks and studies from Pravat’s practice spanning from 2016 to 2021 that include sculptural installations, paintings, drawings, collage works and prints, and draw on lived experiences of the built environment.
“My art practice over the years has been an attempt to capture and play with the state of everything being constantly under construction. I feel that all materials have a consciousness of their own, they are bearers of memories and marks. I am interested in how they take on new forms when they interact with other materials, and what happens when they disintegrate and get reintegrated into other forms. When you see urban environments in this way, everything starts appearing fluid even though the materials are solid.”
– M. Pravat
Movement in Stillness - 1, 2020
Fired Bricks, Metal Frame, Cement, Concrete, Board
237.5 x 123.5 x 7.6 cm (93.5 x 48.6 x 3")
Movement in Stillness - 2, 2020
Fired Bricks, Metal Frame, Cement, Concrete, Board
237.5 x 123.5 x 22.9 cm (93.5 x 48.6 x 9")
Settlement - I, 2021
Mixed Media on Handmade Canvas
76.2 x 101.6 cm (30 x 40")
Settlement - II, 2021
Mixed Media on Handmade Canvas
76.2 x 101.6 cm (30 x 40")
Bringing together a range of media that includes brick, dust, slate, wood, metal, ink, graphite, pigment, paper and canvas, M. Pravat’s art practice utilises materials that draw on lived experiences of the built environment. His works evoke the disintegration of cityscapes where blue-prints, maps, architecture and geological land mass collapse into one another. Fugitive Dust presents a condensed encounter with the material flux of contemporary reality through his practice.
About M. Pravat
M. Pravat completed his Bachelor’s degree in painting in 2002 and his Master’s in 2004, both granted by the Faculty of Fine Arts at M.S. University, Baroda. His practice examines architectural forms and materials through a fractured lens. Over the yes, his works have been presented in solo and group exhibitions, biennales and art fairs in Colombo, Delhi, Dubai, Mumbai, New York, Seoul and Zurich.
His recent solo-exhibitions include ‘Liquid States’ in 1x1 Gallery, Dubai (2017); ‘From Today, I Have No Future’, Aicon Gallery, New York (2017); and ‘Blue Print’, Nature Morte, Delhi (2011). He is a member of the Layout collective along with artists Navid Tschopp, Susanta Mondal, and architect S. Boka, and their projects have been exhibited in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2012), Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (2013), INSERT (2014), the Colombo Biennale (2014), and in non-institutional sites in Delhi and Zurich. He has been the recipient of the ProHelvetia artist residency in Switzerland. Pravat lives and works in New Delhi.
About Sabih Ahmed
Sabih Ahmed is a curator and writer based in Dubai. He currently holds the position of Associate Director and Curator of Ishara Art Foundation. His curatorial work and research focus on modern and contemporary art of South Asia through diverse itineraries, languages, and inter-disciplinary formations. Prior to Ishara, Ahmed was a Senior Researcher and Projects Manager at Asia Art Archive from 2009 to 2019.
He has led research projects around the digitisation of seminal artist archives, digital bibliographies of art across multiple languages, and organised colloquia and seminars around digital archives and educational resources. Ahmed was a Curatorial Collegiate member of the 11th Shanghai Biennale curated by Raqs Media Collective in 2016, has served as a Visiting Faculty at the Ambedkar University, Delhi from 2014 - 2019, and his writings have been published in various international publications. Ahmed is currently on the Advisory Board of Sher-Gil Sundaram Arts Foundation, Delhi.