Unstable Figures And Fragmented Architecture

Anirudh Chari dwells on Praneet Soi’s exploration of the divided self in times of conflict.

- Anirudh Chari

Praneet Soi’s solo Hold Still at Experimenter’s new space located on the upper floors of an art deco house in Calcutta’s Ballygunge Place from December 1st 2018 to the 2nd of February 2019 was quite thought-provoking. The show looked at forms as points of departure, sites of origin, becoming and transformation. It also engaged with fundamental human issues – people as individuals and as members of collectives, as social objects and beings and their relation to space and nature.

The social and philosophical aspects of the works were most significant in the clearly titled Falling Figure in which a large figure seemed to be collapsing backwards through space. Apparently at peace with himself and as though tumbling into happy oblivion, this conventionally clad man encouraged the viewer to think about the void into which he was dropping and the process of metamorphosis which would lead towards stasis. The drama of this moment, a point between life and death, of movement translated into sculpture, facilitated rumination on the entry of a work of art into the realm of the eternal.