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Lot Essay
Muhanned Cader was born in 1966 in Colombo, and currently lives and works between Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Cader’s work has been widely exhibited and collected.
The artist's series of Nightscapes comprises thirteen lyrical painted wooden cut-outs rendered in shades of blue, depicting various seas, oceans and rivers under boundless nighttime skies. For this series, Cader recreated the shapes of objects that he stumbled upon on the beach including shells, rocks, feathers and the carcasses of sea creatures that had washed ashore. Here, the artist abandons the rectangular format that is often used to depict landscapes and rejects the notion of the frame and any 'fixed' way of seeing and knowing things. He notes, “I remove the rectangular frame that surrounds the landscape in my drawing. It is similar to asking what surrounds our understanding, or do we only ever know part of the truth?” (Artist statement, S. Pereira, Mumbai Mutai, exhibition catalogue, Sri Lanka, 2010)
These particular Nightscapes are inspired by Cader's observations during a trip to Croyde Bay in Devon, on the South coast of the United Kingdom. However, the artist's use of unusual shapes or 'fragments' is a device to represent the many beach landscapes of his birthplace, Sri Lanka, which were ravaged and fragmented by the country's long and bloody civil war. His cut-outs of familiar objects represent partial knowledge and the subjectivity of particular lived experiences.
The artist's series of Nightscapes comprises thirteen lyrical painted wooden cut-outs rendered in shades of blue, depicting various seas, oceans and rivers under boundless nighttime skies. For this series, Cader recreated the shapes of objects that he stumbled upon on the beach including shells, rocks, feathers and the carcasses of sea creatures that had washed ashore. Here, the artist abandons the rectangular format that is often used to depict landscapes and rejects the notion of the frame and any 'fixed' way of seeing and knowing things. He notes, “I remove the rectangular frame that surrounds the landscape in my drawing. It is similar to asking what surrounds our understanding, or do we only ever know part of the truth?” (Artist statement, S. Pereira, Mumbai Mutai, exhibition catalogue, Sri Lanka, 2010)
These particular Nightscapes are inspired by Cader's observations during a trip to Croyde Bay in Devon, on the South coast of the United Kingdom. However, the artist's use of unusual shapes or 'fragments' is a device to represent the many beach landscapes of his birthplace, Sri Lanka, which were ravaged and fragmented by the country's long and bloody civil war. His cut-outs of familiar objects represent partial knowledge and the subjectivity of particular lived experiences.