Tauseef Khan’s new series of paintings renders history as reflected through prisms of glass and memory as a distortion of perception. While he weaves together both representation and abstraction, he also melds architectural landscapes with still lifes, creating paintings steeped in prodigious antecedents. The characteristics of transparency and opacity are juxtaposed, creating puzzles that meld liquidity with solidity. Portraits of some of India’s best known monuments (the tombs of Humayun and Lodhi Gardens, the Jantar Mantar, the Taj Mahal) are glimpsed through scrims of decorative glassware which turn their stoic masonry into a melting array of pigments. Kahn Indianizes the tradition of the Vanitas Vanitatum, the beginning of still life painting in Holland in the 16th Century, when collections of objects represented the fleeting nature of mortal existence and painters competed against each other for the most astute verisimilitude.

Tauseef Khan was born in New Delhi in 1980 and studied painting at Triveni Kala Sangam, later apprenticing with the artist Ajay Desai. His works have been exhibited in group shows at Nature Morte and the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi and the Hacienda Gallery in Mumbai. He was the recipient of the Best Entry Award for the exhibition “Autumn@CWG 2010” from the Indian Council of Cultural Relations. He lives and works in New Delhi.

Image: © Tauseef Khan, Nature Morte