Review: Sumit Mehndiratta

The sublimation of the artist and his romantic self-absorption, the vanity of his entourage and the biography turned science-fiction tale have all helped spread the popular belief that the creative act isn't worthy enough unless it oozes suffering and melancholy. An artist who doesn't cut off an ear is less of an artist.

Sumit Mehndiratta sits at the opposite end of that idea of the artist as a gloomy, afflicted demiurge. For Sumit his art is a profession, a business, but also a game, a date that ends with a kiss and a "see you tomorrow". Sumit enjoys experimenting, tinkering in the studio, looking for new techniques to express his devotion to life: his artwork is a tribute to colour, to fluidity, to harmony. Because yes, life also has suffering, taxes and traffic jams, but we'll deal with that tomorrow: today is for loving.

Beauty in the uncertainty of life

Just a subtle shift in point of view lets us move from grief to joy. But you have to keep your eyes on the shift. Sumit Mehndiratta looked the other way because he didn't much like what was in front of him: he went from marketing to self-taught art. After rounding off his studies in fashion marketing at several British universities, Sumit shut himself in a studio and started experimenting. And he discovered that in art he would find something close to happiness.

So far, abstraction with plant-like echoes works as the axis around which a good part of his series turn, in painting as much as in sculpture or photography. In the series Dripology, the Indian artist experiments with the fluidity of colour. Here his technique is a mix of chance and harmony in which "gravity has a lot to do with it".

Sumit lets the colour drip and flow, creating chromatic patterns. The result is a happy accident in which the viewer vibrates, pushed along by the pulsing colours. But within this slightly psychedelic abstraction, the Indian artist also offers calmer artworks such as Untitled No. 120 or Untitled No. 117, where the dripping generates circles of colour on a great white tapestry. Even though Sumit enjoys abstraction because "viewers always interpret it differently", canvases like these soothe the savage beast the way a string quartet does: in the (controlled) chance of the artist's technique, Sumit looks for, and often finds, the beauty of life's uncertainty.

A technique that doesn't crush creativity

Although a good part of Sumit Mehndiratta's artwork revolves around painting, he has spent the last few years of his career experimenting with other forms such as sculpture, or looking into digital art. Sumit doesn't want to repeat himself, and if a series runs dry, he moves on to the next one until he finds an inspiring technique that lets him keep expressing himself with no strings attached.

His sculptures, generally conceived to be shown on a wall, squeeze every last drop out of the artist's taste for abstraction. Sumit uses mixed techniques, with thread, wood, glass or metal to the fore, generating decorative webs of pure geometry in which he doesn't forget his devotion to colour either. As for his contributions in digital art, the Indian artist delivers artworks with a marked psychedelia of plant-like memories and the odd figurative or even pop reference. The basis of his art is the expression of emotion through colour, and he has taken that mantra to his photographs too, where he shows his enthusiasm for nature in general and flowers in particular.

But he doesn't want to hear a word, at least for now, about a "patented style". For him, "repeating limits an artist's creativity". And although the lack of a defined style can be a double-edged sword, both artistically and commercially, the experimentation at the base of his work is taking him down all sorts of paths.

"Most painters are too melancholic", says Sumit, without beating around the bush. He prefers to express joy and happiness through the vibration of colour, a chromatic tremor that radiates out to the viewer that dominates much of his artwork and has become his great discovery. And all of it without cutting off an ear.

We invite you to visit Sumit Mehndiratta's gallery on Artelista.