Painting exhibition by Namal Kumara
at Paradise Road Gallery
unitil 5th of January 2023
A contestation of power ensues in the chaos of coloured abstraction and discernible forms in Namal Kumara’s latest exhibition. NATHTHI GO SAMITHAN DHANAN repurposes the metaphor of the bull he introduced in “Ruefullness” to examine power dynamics from a Marxian standpoint. The series is an examination of a system that is sustained on the contributions and suffering of the proletariat.
It celebrates the proletariat and looks towards a time when they would rise up from the blind servitude and present a challenge the ruling classes. Nanti Go Samitan Dhanan repurposes the metaphor of the bull in a Marxian examination of power, politics and social classes. A contestation of power ensues in the chaos of coloured abstraction. Burnt canvas and soot lend a formidable form to the invisible proletariat. Their existence is marked by suffering and hardship in a fragmented political system that thrives on deprivation. Optimism, however, lingers in the bright and bold shades through which the artist envisions a time when the working class would take power into their own hands and rise up from blind servitude.
Nama l Kumara is a young and emerging Sri Lankan artist who works with identity, gender and human relationships. He graduated from the University of Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo in 2016. His work is defined by a vivid, angular and geometric visual style. Nanti Go Samitan Dhanan is his first exhibition at Paradise Road Galleries. He presented his first solo exhibition with Art Space Sri Lanka (now SFG Platform) in 2018. Kumara’s works had been selected to participate in the Imago Mundi Publication by the Benetton Foundation in 2016 and his work belongs in several local and international private collections