Sandeep Mukherjee

Artist’s Statement

My work strives to articulate those instances in which explicit distinctions known to us through science, art and culture blur and fade into one another. For the past several years, I have made abstract paintings and installations that underscore the viewer’s physical presence and activate the entire architectural space in which the artwork and viewer exist. The structural use of line, either horizontal as in horizons, undulating as in mountains and valleys, spiraling and circling as in expansion and contraction or perspectival as in approaching and receding has been integral in my ongoing investigation of dimensional reality and the subjective experience of limitless space. Comprehending infinity, a desire that can be articulated but never obtained has been a driving force for the recent work. The line used in pictorial space is a finite edge where different spaces meet, but in fact encompasses infinity. Does this paradoxical edge represent an attempt to grasp at unity and difference simultaneously? The vanishing point of perspective that appears fixed is always approaching the point, but never arrives. What does this infinite delay imply for the limits of human knowledge and experience? The complementary nature of light, simultaneously a particle and a wave, serves as a useful model for me to explore the edge between subjective experience and objective information. When one can predict the position of the particle, it is impossible to determine the wavelength of the wave and vice versa. To me this conundrum points to the struggle of extrapolating meaning from evidence and experience. As a strategy to straddle this dilemma, my work emphasizes materiality and exactitude, but also remains perceptually mutable and incorporeal. The fusion of this paradox aspires to become a conduit to another dimension of experience where the possibilities are many and ultimately open ended for the viewers to inscribe for themselves.

Website: sandeepmukherjeeart.com

Biography

Select Solo Exhibitions

2008
Sandeep Mukherjee, Sister, Cottage Home, Los Angeles
Spell: Sandeep Mukherjee, Nichols Gallery; Broad Center, Los Angeles; Pitzer College, Claremont, Calif.
Sandeep Mukherjee, Nature Morte Gallery, New Delhi

2005
Sandeep Mukherjee, Sister, Los Angeles

2004
Project 21: Sandeep Mukherjee, Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, Calif.

2002
Sandeep Mukherjee, Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles

2000
Sandeep Mukherjee: Redolence, Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles

Select Group Exhibitions

2009
Los Angeles: Aspects of an Archaic Revival, Galerie Haus Schneider, Karlsruhe, Germany
Dialogue in Art: South Asian American Art Festival, Santa Monica, Calif.

2008
Portrayal Betrayal, Long Beach City College, Long Beach, Calif.
Faculty Exhibition, Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, Calif.
Ambivalent figuration; people, Samson Projects, Boston
A New Cosmopolitanism: Preeminence of place in contemporary art, California State University, Fullerton, Fullerton, Calif.

2007
Humor Us, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery,Los Angeles
Painting’s Edge, Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, Calif.
Rogue Wave, LA Louver Gallery, Venice, Calif.
Darling, take Fountain, Kalfayan Gallery, Athens, Greece

2006
DRAW·ING (dro’ing) n., BravinLee programs, New York
Symmetry, The MAK Center at the Schindler House, West Hollywood, Calif.
Otis Alumni Exhibition, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles
The Senses, Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, Calif.
Pieces of Angels: Contemporary Art from Los Angeles, University Art Gallery, Sonoma State University, Sonoma, Calif.
Drawing and Drawn, Cerritos College Art Gallery, Norwalk, Calif.

2005
Adjunct, University of Southern California, Helen Lindhurst Gallery, Los Angeles
Works on Paper, Museum of Modern Art, New York

2004
Erotic Night Mother’s Day, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
SPF: Self-Portraits, Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, Calif.
To the Point, State Gallery, Vancouver, Canada

2003
Warped Space, California College of the Arts, Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco
Go Figure! Manifestations of the Human Form in Contemporary Art, Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, Boone, N.C.
Raid the Icebox, Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles
Conversations, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Real Me, Occidental College Galleries, Los Angeles
International Paper, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

2002
LA Post-Cool, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, Calif., and The Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles
Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, N.C.
Drive By, Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, Va.

2001
Boomerang, Exit Art, New York
Hard-Boiled Wonderland, Harriet and Charles Luckman Fine Arts Gallery, California State University, Los Angeles
The Importance of Being Earnest, Occidental College, Los Angeles

2000
Philosophy in the Bedroom, OR Gallery, Vancouver, Canada

Professional Experience

2006 – present
Assistant Professor of Art, Pomona College, Claremont, Calif.

2004 – 2005
Instructor, University of Southern California

2000 – 2004
Instructor, University of California, Irvine

1988 – 1993
Systems Analyst, Texas Instruments

EDUCATION

M.F.A., 1999
University of California, Los Angeles

B.F.A., 1996
Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles

M.S., 1988
University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, Calif.

B.S., 1986
Manipal Institute of Technology, Mangalore, India