The River Flowing Through Me- Solo Show KP Pradeepkumar

There is a sense of becoming, of life flowing continuously within us as it mingles into nature. In this solo exhibition - The River Flowing Through Me, Kochi based artist KP Pradeepkumar, creates autobiographical landscapes through the visual metaphors of rivers, mountains and time. He believes that all living organisms coexist with animate and inanimate forces of nature. This correlation is a continuous narrative, which transcends time.

It is a flow, like that of a river. 

In these paintings of the luscious green, resplendent landscapes of his hometown Kochi, he focuses on the various visceral relationships between Nature and the Self - a being present in different times and geographies. The foundation to this series was laid with the working title - Unknown Mainland,  but quickly moved to the current one as there are long, winding common threads that vigorously course through his brilliant, sensitive, if precarious paintings that made it far more appropriate.

His artistic practice navigates the omnipresence of the protagonist as he employs mixed media; working with equal tenacity in pen and ink as he does with watercolour on paper, gouache and pencil drawings to build layers of thematic connectedness with the Self and its surrounding geographies. The initial drawing lines form an integral part of each work; and what continues to be a leitmotif, are these prominent diagonals you see criss-crossing over and under the flora and fauna, reminding you of classical European compositions. His thought is deeply influenced by the Malayalam literature of O V Vijayan, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, Thakazhi, SK Pottakkat, Vailoppally, P Kunjiraman Nair and A Ayyappan. I have known him to be a voracious reader, who loves the powerful writings of Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Darwin, ideas from which I find surreptitiously embedded within his oeuvre. 

KP Pradeepkumar, who we have represented since 2018, has shown with us at the India Art Fair editions of 2019, 2020 and 2023. Every meeting, every visit to Kochi or his visit to Delhi has always been filled with the idea of the land and what it means to him. He recounts how Kerala has been fraught with the Adiwasi land struggles for decades. In 2010, these landless people stood in the waters for 100 days to draw the attention of the government and it became an iconic strike that deeply impacted the artist. His most recent series shown at this exhibition, one of which has become the cover of the catalogue and the show, depicts these standing figures with arms upraised - symbolic and metaphoric representation of these people not having a ground to stand on. In fact, it is a rather flimsy sort of a nowhere land as they stand not so much in the mud of the waters but on Salvinia auriculata- a water plant with beautiful pink flowers typical of the region.

His paintings are nuanced, philosophical and poetic, holding within them the history, the political and the economic struggles of his people.

• Monica Jain, Curator