Lines of Sight
Recent works by Kumaresan Selvaraj
How does culture shape cognition? To what extent is perception controlled by the mind in relation to the senses? How do we extract an individual thought from collective consciousness, or separate the contexts of high and low cultures, the rubric of East and West customs and the languages in which different societies communicate and share knowledge, in order to assess the impact of social structures on perception?
Cultural perception or the language in which we think and articulate our thoughts has a direct bearing on our worldview and the manner in which we understand materials. From the early twentieth century, anthropologists and psychologists have linked our perceptive and cognitive faculties in order to better understand the influence of cultural conditioning on the way we observe and represent our surroundings. It is this ‘sense of sight’ that shapes the art of Kumaresan Selvaraj; drawn from perceived information and recalled memories. Materialized into objects and abstractions of nature, this body of work explores the limits of materiality within artistic production, cyclic change and the repetition of actions thereof, and the nature of memories that are singularly fragile but that which collectively reinforce our personalities and govern our associations with the world.
Lines of Sight is an exhibition that voices the need for independent thinking and a desire to free our minds from the socio-cultural fabric that binds us. But it also firmly establishes the foundations from which we can grow and progress, and cultivate change.
Kanika Anand
New Delhi, 2019
