Description
Anonymous male bodies have been a constant motif in his art. He uses the body as a canvas over which he experiments by superimposing different styles of ornamentations- ranging from botanical floral drawings to masks and markings inspired by the art of Rangoli. Dheeraj draws from his own experiences of the human body to represent it untethered by the burden of rigid gender conventions imposed by society and his own cultural upbringing.
He exposes, through elaborate staging and meticulous contortions, the landscapes of the human body and the many hidden nooks and crannies that carry traces of untapped and concealed emotions. The body becomes the subject and the object in his work- rendered into abstraction, reminiscent of organic rocks and boulders but somehow still retaining its ‘human-ness’ albeit in an unsettlingly intimate way that provokes the viewer’s primal instinct to touch and experience the sensory pleasure of bare skin.
METAMORPHOSIS – Duality in nature: Whisper of the seed, memory of the leaf