Given the abundance and significance of structures both in theoretical paradigms as well as in contemporary life, Pooja Iranna’s abstractions of the same in her latest show are topical as well as interesting. References to inner and outer spaces of manmade structures have been present in her art practice for a long time. In the current
selection on display she continues to explore the human dimension associated with buildings through an elaborate interplay of presence, absence, expressions, and emotions that resonate through the structures of these her paintings, drawings and sculptures.
The line, especially the straight line is significant in the paintings as walls, planes, and verticals. The form emerges from the background canvas through a series of permutations and combinations of the line rather than through colours which remain monochromatic and minimalist. However, the delineation of the line is deceptive, for what seems to be a simple vertical or horizontal stroke has a slight, sudden and serendipitous curve in it, resonating the graph of life itself, partly concealed, partly revealed.
Texture is another important element in the composition of the works, as in Unspoken Voices where dripping red against browns, of sienna and umber creates an enigmatic aura of the seminal and the unfathomable. Even in her drawings forms emerge like architectural plans but with a curious textured appearance seemingly revealing a slightly shadowy version of the original plan like a dream or reality behind a veil. Mirroring as if the pealing of the wishfully ordered surface reality to reveal the shadowy obscure beneath. The small and medium sized sculptures in her show have been created by stacking staple pins atop each other. The silvery grey of these echoes the grays of the painted lines. But the perfect symmetries of the staple pin forms have twists and turns that mirror the complexities of human mind and its response to spaces and surfaces. Apartment, stairways, silos, pyramids; paths that go round and round are recognisable urban architectural forms with their stories of alienation, transformation, destructive regeneration contained within the walls.
— The writer is an art historian, curator and critic