After a long period of concentrating on meticulous large-scale drawings, Aji V.N. revitalizes melancholy, characteristic of his charcoal environments, in a set of 18 oils on canvas, completed between 2013 and 2017. Thematically, there are continuities; the landscape is dotted with fields or distant houses – traces of civilization – captured in a moment of desolation. These nuances, defined by chiaroscuro, seem to be captured on camera. But it is the brilliant radiance emanating from the background, especially of these new oils, that creates an atmosphere charged with mystique.
Born 1968 in Kerala, Aji V.N. has been living and working in Rotterdam since the early 1990s. He has had solo exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Schiedam, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai, and Nature Morte, New Delhi. Among other venues, his work has been shown at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, in the exhibition 'The Artist Lives and Works in Baroda / Bombay / Calcutta / Mysore / Rotterdam / Trivandrum' (2005); 'Drawing Typologies', Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2007); the 3rd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2009); and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014). His work is the collections of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi and the Piramal Museum of Art in Mumbai.