Antonio Puri
Excerpt from essay on Layering Constructs by Maiza Hixson
Antonio Puri’s multipaneled, nearly monochromatic and expressionistic painting introduces ideas of city, space, and home into Layering Constructs. An international artist, Puri travels widely and is currently based in Philadelphia. Entitled Birthplace(2014), his work is an abstract map of his hometown, Chandigarh, India, the first planned city in 1947 post-independence in Northern India. The Modern French architect Le Corbusier designed the utopian city and, according to Puri, the painting’s grey palette reflects the ubiquitous concrete employed to build the city. A total of three long rows of six individual canvases each, this monumental grid functions as one work of art. The significance of such an amalgamation of parts cannot be underestimated. As Puri queries, “Constructs of different aspects of the self are limited; is my existence a microcosm within the universe or do I make art that transcends individuality to connect with Oneness?”
Puri introduces numerous textural elements into the work, including soil from Chandigarh mixed with acrylic paint. He also applies string to the canvas, which serves as a circuitous graphic line throughout the painting. String appears in other works by the artist, such as large-scale installations and a series of photographic portraits, in which Puri wraps the faces of his sitters in a performative gesture that underscores metaphorical connection and intertwined lives. In his painting, the string, along with sinewy paint drips over cavernous shadows, lends a visceral quality to Birthplacethat borders on the surreal.
Other nonobjective painterly embellishments appear across the surface of Puri’s work, including trails of white dots and triangular fuschia clusters that lead the eye across the painting’s textured topography. A mandala-like formation emerges from the bottom of the painting, suggesting an enigmatic symbol that unifies the composition. The abbreviated word “CHAND,” looks like a passport stamp. We apprehend small surface details, such as subtly drawn graphite numbers via an aerial view of the entire city. In this way, Puri emphasizes constant shifts in perspective, from being extremely close to very far away.
The distance from “home” in Puri’s painting can be perceived as physical and emotional. Given the title, we are invited to consider our own relationship to birthplaces and more broadly, ideas of origin. Who do we think we are as both citizens confronting the concrete walls of this city and as individuals approaching identity and consciousness in a more universal or global sense? Such questions point to one interpretation of Birthplace as a philosophical dialogue exploring the individual’s and humanity’s quest for meaning and place. The idea that one’s origins do not necessarily dictate one’s identity seems to be a significant feature of Puri’s ethereal cartography.
Given that it is also a Western European and Indian city, the idea of Chandigarh as a hybrid urban space mirrors Puri’s identity as traveling between seemingly disparate worlds. Layers of time, embedded in the materiality of paint and process, relate to ideas of coming and going home. In an increasingly globalized society, people move more freely than ever before, forcing us to shed our constructs of home as being only one place.
installation at DCCA Museum in Delaware, 2015