In Praise of Limits I Nature Morte, Mumbai2025
‘In Praise of Limits’ was a solo exhibition that was presented at Nature Morte in 2025, bringing together works from the ongoing series ‘Notes on Movement’, ‘Ray’, alongside a new body of sculptural works titled ‘Drawing Sculpture: Turn.’ Across these bodies of work, the exhibition continued an investigation into architecture as an active field of perception, where lines, light, spatial movement, and positioning of the body continually alter the experience of space.
Titled as ‘Notes on Movement’, the series continues to extend my ongoing exploration of movement, parallax, perception and architectural memory. Where, each drawing registers and captures the residue of movement rather than the certainty of form. Layered and translucent compositions allow forms to appear, overlap, and recede, translating the experience of moving through the architecture. And thereby, inviting the viewer’s eye to slow down and inhabit the subtle shifts between presence and absence.
The architecture of the exhibition space here also became an active prompt in developing the works. During my initial engagement with the site, its numerous corners, turns, projections, and structural interruptions drew attention to the role of architectural constraints in directing movement. It was walking alongside a central column within the space that revealed a quality that had earlier been absent from the existent works within this series, i.e. a sense of ‘centrality’ around which movement could occur. This very observation informed the work, ‘Notes on Movement #206’, where the square void positioned between four framed parts is an architectural element that subsequently redirects the movement around the work itself. The work here aimed to explore the significance of architectural constraints in shaping up the viewer’s perception, and thereby creating a dynamic experience through subtle shifts in perceived spatial positions.
Light became another significant material within the exhibition. The changing daylight entering through the window within the exhibition space drew my closer interest, as it moved across the adjacent architecture. Emerging from this observation, the works from ‘Ray’ series (Ray 1) were positioned nearby to directly engage with the conditions of the natural light. Mounted on an adjacent wall, this temporal encounter with the visual form of repetitive ink-based linear marks on paper was subsequently documented. Producing varying densities and degrees of luminosity in which light appears to gather, disperse, and dissolve along the architectural space it occupies. Rather than merely depicting light as a static subject, the works attempt to register its changing presence and the atmospheric conditions it generates within the architecture.
The exhibition also marked the development of a new sculptural body, ‘Drawing Sculpture: Turn.’ Fabricated in aluminium and finished with industrial paint, the work refocuses attention towards ‘corners’ as an overlooked yet fundamental architectural element. While walls and surfaces tend to dominate our visual attention, it is the corner that joins and anchors them, giving structure to a space while simultaneously creating the conditions through which the body turns, changes direction, and moves. Materialised in metal, the matte black color and reflective surfaces of the sculpture also shifts as they respond differently to changing light and viewpoint. As the viewer moves, reflections, shadows, and surfaces continually alter, preventing the work from settling into a single visual state. By isolating and transforming the architectural condition into sculptural form, the works shift the corner from a functional necessity into a subject of perception, thereby making perception an active material within the work.
Photo Courtesy: Nature Morte I Satakshi Sinha
In Praise of Limits- Press Release
In Praise of Limits- Text by Srinivias Aditya Mopidevi
