Sangram Majundar “insidegardens”

steven harvey fine art projects

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In our rear gallery, SHFAP presents an exhibition of paintings by Sangram Majumdar. This show includes a significant earlier work from 2006, Built to Spill, along with works from 2011-15. They can be seen to presage his recent works, where abstraction is intermingled with fleeting elements of representation. In Built to Spill he creates almost a cubist observational painting by focusing on shards of broken chairs. In Paper Re-positioned, he paints a typhoon of cut paper pieces lying on top of a landscape image.

Majumdar first showed with SHFAP in 2009. The current exhibition of seven works is Majumdar’s 5th at the gallery. It touches on his profound approach to perceptual painting. Majumdar’s interest is in exploring the hidden, the peripheral, and the in-between. The paintings purposely resist direct interpretation, inviting us to slow down, embrace ambiguity, and trust our senses.

Majumdar was born in Kalcutta and moved to the United States when he was 9 years old. His transfer across international lines at a young age is reflected in his work, which involves hybrid states, synthesis and transformation.

John Yau wrote about Majumdar’s work: “It seems to me that Majumdar is after that moment of seeing which occurs just before we name the object, event or experience and begin looking for the next thing, whatever it is,” Yau adds, “I see this as a risky gambit as well as a conscious challenge to a media-besotted world that revels in names and naming, as if somehow everything can be accounted for, safely categorized and subsequently copied.”

Majumdar has been a Professor of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art since 2003. In 2017, he had a survey exhibition at Asia Society Texas Center in Houston, Texas. He will join the faculty of the University of Seattle in Washington State this year.