Chroma

Artist Anu Malhotra’s relationship with colour is adventurous harmonious, antagonistic, peculiar and maverick. In the Chroma series of paintings, the paint is poured, dribbled, thrown, squeezed and rollered onto the canvas where a melange of colours collide, mingle, repel and attract each other.

Sharp lines sheathe the canvas, creating ridges and reflections that would be impossible to imagine in the real world. Colours flow and seep, they dance and break and unite. Like a kaleidoscope, they merge and emerge, forever fascinating in their combinations that change even as you view them. Did the colours move when you had your back to them? Did they convert? Change? Amend? The Chroma paintings seem alive, moving – nay, teeming and shapeshifting every time you blink.

“These paintings have the capacity to draw you in and drown you. These works are like fragments of our larger universe where mysterious auroras, reflections, subterranean and terrestrial landscapes explode into your senses”

Hung on a wall, each of these becomes in effect a portal into another dimension. They draw the eye and the mind into a hypnotic vortex that seizes and unfurls the viewer into a hitherto unexplored inner space. These paintings have the power to transform and energize a space. Even on the level of the simply aesthetic, these vivid paintings soothe our sensibilities and satisfy the hunger of the soul to be surrounded by things of beauty. The works are meditative and sublime, a mystical device for discovering the still, quiet center hidden within the tumult of colour and apparent movement.