Playing Fields

Nataraj Sharma combines depictions of socio-political events from around the world, linking urbanization and landscapes with the human presence at the interstices of modernity. His oeuvre reveals a variety of influences, ranging from Pop art and its stalwart Andy Warhol, to Dadaism and Marcel Duchamp and to Indian Progressive Art.

Sharma's works explore urban landscapes and industrial geometry, dealing with the construction boom that has overtaken India in the last few years. He explores formal elements of painting and conventional principles of light and symmetry through his signature style of portraying industrial landscapes of vacant, incomplete buildings. In an interview with Art India, Sharma explains his penchant for depicting empty edifices: "I find a particular poignancy in half-built buildings. I see them as works in progress - frozen in time. Great towers thrusting upwards, bridges between our shuffling and the heavens, geometric mountains catching the sunlight. Measuring the earth and the sky, grids and plans drawn in careful preparations." (Artist statement, S. Bordewekar,'Big Things Have Small Beginnings', Art India, Vol XIII, Issue III+IV, 2008-09, p. 44)