Sharma`s physical move from Bangalore to Vadodara in the 1990s brought with it a transformation in his work – unlike his early works that were figurative and concentrated on the human condition in urban environments, his pieces bean to reflect barren, industrial landscapes. “Moving to the outskirts of this city in Western India, I was confronted with a primal, elemental landscape dotted by factories that looked extremely...
Sharma`s physical move from Bangalore to Vadodara in the 1990s brought with it a transformation in his work – unlike his early works that were figurative and concentrated on the human condition in urban environments, his pieces bean to reflect barren, industrial landscapes. “Moving to the outskirts of this city in Western India, I was confronted with a primal, elemental landscape dotted by factories that looked extremely desolate in the summer. The world might be at the forefront of technology but for us these outdated factories and chunky machines are an everyday reality…I want to seek the peculiar beauty of these desolate structures. Their permanence is comforting” (excerpt from an interview, Real in Realism, Vadhera Art Gallery, 2002).
In this work, constructed in the form of a triptych, Sharma combines the close-up details of a machine part with panoramic vistas of the arid environments in which he came across it. In his experimentation with split pictorial spaces, the artist exercises direction over his viewers` gaze, emphasizing the varied ways in which a single vista can be perceived and interpreted. According to critic Ranjit Hoskote, the machine part has “gained a somewhat terrifying magnitude from its formal isolation in close-up, while the long shot held a landscape, aloof and distant yet capable of surprisingly intimate, eloquent passages of colour and texture” (“Five Studies for a Portrait of Natraj Sharma” in Natraj Sharma, Bose Pacia Gallery, 2005).