Muhanned Cader
Sky, 2016 Graphite on paper 23” x 22 3/4″ (Each of 6)
Talwar Gallery is pleased to present Island, Muhanned Cader’s first solo exhibition in India. On view in Island are Muhanned’s recent body of collages, drawings, and paintings. Often creating works in series, there are meditative depictions of the sea, changing with the light of the passing of the day into the evening. Rolling towards the shore while they obscure the massive displacement and turbulence below, the sea waves in Muhanned’s work conceal as much as they reveal. Balancing between what is and what is not, the past and the present, Muhanned remains committed to a critical excavation of the neo-colonial agendas afflicting his home country. Drawing on a close observation of nature, the playfully inventive constructs are actually excised from printed matter on contemporary art, tourism, and institutionally commissioned cultural ephemera. Here Muhanned not only dismembers the paper but the ideologies themselves of a contemporary Sri Lankan society that has allowed unrestrained development in the name of progress. These violent mutations of enchanting forms created by Muhanned seem natural inhabitants in an increasingly deteriorating ecosystem of once an idyllic island.
Atlas of Forms, 2015 Oil on canvas 12″ diameter (each of 3)
Muhanned Cader was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 1966, and he earned his Bachelors in Fine Arts from The School of Art Institute of Chicago in 1994. Since then, he has participated in a number of international projects. His work has been featured at the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) at Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia; 1st Singapore Biennale, Singapore; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; Devi Art Foundation, Delhi; Herbert Johnson Museum at Cornell University, New York; Nasher Museum at Duke University, North Carolina and the 2nd Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, India.