Vanishing Acts

Boundless mountains in Kartik Sood’s paintings open a portal to a world that is oneiric, intense and expansive, exults Arushi Vats.

- Arushi Vats

Kartik Sood. Treasure. Oil, acrylic, pigmented ink, wooden box with metal, artist-designed wooden panel. 65” x 35.35”. 2019. © the artist and Talwar Gallery. Images Courtesy Talwar Gallery New York / New Delhi.

“The universe began as an enormous breath being held.” In American sci-fi writer Ted Chiang’s creationist fable titled Exhalation, a scientist narrates the rush that follows the discovery that the world is animated by air – rituals of dissection and anatomical excavations that mark the bases of empirical knowledge are performed with a frenzy. As each successive principle of order unfolds, the unnamed narrator is besieged by the realisation of telos: an end to their species’ arc in time. Yet, what accompanies this epiphany is a sense of gratitude and wonder, a reckoning with the implausible fact of existence, its occurrence at the confluence of so many uncertain elements.