Artist : Viraag Desai
Title : Genesis in 4 parts - 1
Medium : Watercolour, gouache, ink on paper
Size : 11" x 11"
Year : 2018
Born in Kolkata in 1986, Viraag Desai graduated with a BFA and two Merit Scholarships from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009, and has shown widely in USA & India. He did an artist residency in Nielson Gallery, Grazalema, Spain and a show in Shanghai in 2015.
While in art school, he studied the techniques and aesthetics of traditional art styles, combining their iconography with modern themes. The resultant works were exhibited at the Sullivan Galleries in downtown Chicago.
Viraag Desai is an artist and creator of images both esoteric and apposite in an age of the intangible. He simultaneously preserves and destroys the past in order to create an object, animating it and, thereby, creates the future. There is, however, an underlying sense of nostalgia about all his works as though looking back into personal and collective histories can offer a meaningful perspective on our times and cultural mores.
"Genesis in 4 parts" is inspired by “Atlas Shrugged”, with the interplay of 4 distinct visual elements.
The artist uses graphical elements to tell an old and familiar narrative.
Chapter 1 : out of the chaos of the angled cube is created the smoothness of the circle of order.
Chapter 2 : and with the birth of civilization comes the id, the ego and the superego.
Chapter 3 : where human ambition triumphs over nature
Chapter 4 : the discovery and the nurturing of raw creativity, while all around is chaos.