Lot 1092: JUSTIN PONMANY

JUSTIN PONMANY
(b. 1974)
Untitled
acrylic and holographic pigment on canvas, diptych
each: 190 x 163 cm. (74 7/8 x 64 in.)
overall: 190 x 326 cm. (74 7/8 x 128 1/4 in.)
Painted in 2007

Dubei, 1 x 1 Art Gallery, Af-fair: 15 Contemporary Artists, 2008.

B. Krishnamachari, ed., Af-fair: 15 Contemporary Indian Artists, exhibition catalogue, 1 x 1 Art Gallery, Dubai, 2008 (illustrated, pp. 174-176).

Concerned with the brute Darwinian quality of life in a megalopolis, Justin Ponmany composes his paintings around real people inhabiting actual places and explores notions of cultural identity. The artist suggests that whilst we are now more connected as a global village, we have never been more anonymous as individuals. Untitled(Lot 1092) bears witness to the fact that on the one hand individual experience is still private as it is for this youth, but at the same time the viewer is a voyeur who comes to realize that we too are subject to the same scrutiny with which we examine this boy. Constantly bombarded by an unrelenting media and a whirl of technology, online search engines, emails, text-messages and unceasing progress, Ponmany's choice of materials further underscores this uneasy dialogue between individual and technology. The artist's holographic pigment forces the viewer to constantly re-negotiate one's position in front of the canvas, continually shifting and changing to see what would otherwise not be invisible if one were to look from a single vantage point. As an object is revealed another recedes into the abyss and the viewer's interaction with the canvas becomes a form of physical dialogue indicative of the state of our ever-changing world.