Abir Karmakar's sophisticated paintings create a stimulating interplay between three and two dimensions. His ingenious depiction and placement of commonplace objects within domestic interiors, and his ability to capture the experience of real and fluorescent light, create spaces that hover between fact and fiction.
Karmakar first achieved recognition through paintings focused on human figures but has in recent years preferred interiors emptied of people which hint at human presence through traces of their activities. While these new paintings remain ambivalent and enigmatic, they also build a specific record of a single place and time which is also a chronicle of a family's journey and, through the typicality of that journey, becomes a commentary on larger historical processes.
Born 1977 in Siliguri, India
Bachelor of Visual Arts in Painting, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata
MA in Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda
Lives and works in Baroda
Solo Exhibitions
2020 'Here everything is fine', GALLERYSKE, New Delhi
2017 'Displacement', curated by Birgid Uccia, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
2015 'Uncanny Space', catalogue essay by Donald Kuspit, Aicon Gallery, New York
2012 'Room, Interrupted in Passage', catalogue essay by Ranjit Hoskote, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
2011 'The Morning After', Aicon Gallery, New York
2008 'Within the Walls', catalogue essay by Gayatri Sinha, Gallery Espace, New Delhi and Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
2007 'In The Old Fashioned Way', catalogue essay by Donald Kuspit, Aicon Gallery, London
2007 'Whispering Palette', Red Earth Art Gallery, Baroda
2006 'Interiors', catalogue essay by Kamala Kapoor, Galerie Heike Curtze, Berlin
2005 'from my photo album', catalogue essay by Kamala Kapoor, presented by Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, The Museum Gallery, Mumbai
Selected Group Exhibitions
2020 Asia Society Triennale, New York (October 27 – June 27, 2021)
2019 India Art Fair, New Delhi, presented by Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke
2018 'Drawn From Practice', Experimenter, Kolkata
2018 India Art Fair, New Delhi, presented by Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke
2018 '20 / 20 Artists for Khoj', Khoj International Artist' Association, New Delhi
2017 Kochi-Muziris Biennale Fund-Raiser Auction, Saffronart, Mumbai
2017 Culture of the Streets, Aicon Gallery, New York
2017 'DWELLING', 10th Anniversary Show (Part II), curated by Ranjit Hoskote, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
2016 'Forming in the pupil of an eye', curated by Sudarshan Shetty, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi
2016 Abir Karmakar, Sunil Padwal, Galleryske, Bangalore
2015 'In the depths of our crater lake, all is silent...' 1 x 1 Gallery, Dubai
2015 'Three Projects', Abir Karmakar, Sunil Padwal, Unnikrishnan C; Galleryske, New Delhi
2014 'Mapmakers III: The Evolution of Contemporary South Asian Art', Aicon Gallery, New York
2014 'Residual Remnants' curated by Rekha Rodwittiya, SITE art space, Baroda
2014 India Art Fair, New Delhi, presented by Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
2014 'My Sweet Lord', 1 x 1 Gallery, Dubai
2014 'Reviving the Retinal' curated by Kat Wyma, Gallery OED, Kochi
2013 'Touched by Bhupen', Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
2013 'Peak Shift Effect', curated by Gayatri Sinha, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi
2012 'Four Projects', Gallery Ske, Bangalore, India
2012 'Cynical Love: Life in the everyday', Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi
2012 'Reconstructing (White) 3' curated by Himali Singh Soin, The Loft, Mumbai
2011 'Adbhutam Rasa in Indian Art', CIMA Gallery, Kolkata and India Habitat Centre, New Delhi
2011 'Window in the Wall: India and China- Imaginary Conversations' curated by Gayatri Sinha and Gao Minglu, Pearl Lam Fine Art, Shanghai
2011 'Dolls', curated by Marta Jakimowicz, Gallery Sumukha, Bangalore and Chennai and Rob Dean rt, London
2011 'Of Gods and Goddesses, Cinema, Cricket The New Cultural Icons Of India', curated by Arshiya Lokhandwala for RPG Academy of Art & Music, Mumbai
2011 'Yeh Image Mahaan' India meets Bharat, organized by CIMA Gallery, Kolkata, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
2011 'Pills', curated by Avni Doshi, Latitude 28, Delhi
2011 India Art Summit, New Delhi
2010 'Changing Skin', curated by Marta Jakimowicz for The Fine Art Company, Mumbai
2010 'INDIA AWAKENS – Under the Banyan Tree', Essl Museum, Klosterneuburg, Austria
2010 'Have I Ever Opposed You?, New Art from India and Pakistan', Faye Fleming & Partner, Geneva
2010 'Trial and Error, Abir Karmakar, Debraj Goswami and Rahul Mukherjee', Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda
2009 'A New Vanguard: Trends in Contemporary Indian Art', Saffron Art and The Guild Art Gallery, New York
2009 'Failed Plot', Korea International Art Fair, Seoul
2009 'New Fables: Contemporary Voices', Gandhara Art Gallery, Kolkata
2009 'Long Gone & Living Now', Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
2009 'Threshold: Forging Narratives in South Asian Contemporary Art', Aicon Gallery, New York
2009 'Shifting Shapes – Unstable Signs', curated by Robert Storr and Jaret Vadehra Yale University School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut
2009 'PANORAMA: INDIA', presented by Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, ARCO_Madrid
2009 'Mutant Beauty' curated by Gayatri Sinha, Anant Art Gallery, New Delhi
2008 Gallery weekend presented by Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke at the Baumwollspinnerei Factory Complex, Leipzig
2008 'A MAZ ING', curated by Anupa Mehta for Harsh Goenka/RPG Academy of Art and Culture, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai
2007 1st Anniversary Exhibition, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
2007 'Reality Bites', CIMA Gallery, Kolkata
Public Collections
Essl Museum of Contemporary Art, Klosterneuburg
Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi
Kunstdepot Goeschenen, Switzerland
Award
2016 Asia Society's Future Artist Award