Pilar Corrias is pleased to present ANANDA, an exhibition of abstract paintings from the 1960–90s by Prafulla Mohanti. The works on display were all painted in London, where Mohanti moved in the early 1960s from rural India.
This exhibition forms part of Gallery 2, an occasional programme of exhibitions by non-represented artists at Pilar Corrias Conduit Street.
‘My works are about an immigrant finding himself in another culture – in my case, the journey was from a remote village in India to metropolitan London. It is through paintings that I have been able to mix with people, to have sanity and to be alive. The colours and round shapes that have found their way into my paintings have been crucial to the process of meditation, contemplation and self-realisation through spiritual development. The paintings emerge by themselves like flowers and it is through my paintings that I wish to give joy and peace to others. The word, Ananda, means joy.’ – Prafulla Mohanti
For Mohanti painting is a form of meditation, and the efforts to control the paint’s flow can be likened to a person’s attempts to control their life. The universal symbol of the circle, a recurring form in his work, returns the artist to his childhood, when he was taught to practise the Hindu holy trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara as three circles. Although deeply rooted within the Indian landscape and Tantric culture, Mohanti translates these sources through the language of abstraction to produce paintings as transcendent as they are personal.
