Nothing Casts A Shadow Alone : Hashan Cooray

Hashan Cooray approaches space not as a fixed container but as an entity produced through continuous encounter. The artist’s process mirrors an act of dissection. Drawing from biological studies and the artist’s practice of drying and separating flowers, Cooray breaks apart structures in order to decipher them. Mirroring this process, the portraits that feature in Cooray’s work are partitioned, studied and reassembled allowing the work to move between analysis and construction of the self and social fabric.The familiar figures of earlier bodies of work, from the dense brushwork of Dystopia to the ambiguous beings of Parahuman, reappear as evolving formations.

In the series, Where Depth Begins, paper faces are slightly raised and suspended from the surface of the canvas. Intensely gestural in its mark making, these faces hover over hazy saturated canvases that appear indistinct and atmospheric. The image no longer resides securely within the painting but also occupies a shallow space in front of it. As the viewer shifts their gaze, the shadow cast by the lifted visage makes depth a lived experience rather than a pictorial illusion.

The artist recognises that depth is not inherent but relational. Like a shadow it comes into being only through contact – when light meets form or an observer encounters an object. Cooray treats this principle as both a philosophical and material condition. In True Faces That Break Like Puzzles, the face is approached through fragmentation into puzzle pieces. Divided into interlocking pieces along anatomical lines and assembled into a whole but never fully resolves into a neat finished puzzle. The portrait appears constructed rather than captured. Each segment functions as a unit of perception, and the act of seeing becomes analogous to assembling — the viewer mentally reconnects fragments while simultaneously recognising the impossibility of a complete unit.

Minimalist in philosophy yet materially dense, the exhibition considers how perception shapes reality. The surfaces hold evidence of repeated revision: scraping, covering, revealing. Complexity arises through multiplicity  suggesting that understanding is never singular or complete.

Nothing Casts a Shadow Alone ultimately becomes an exploration of the act of creation itself. The works propose that meaning is not embedded within the artwork nor within the viewer’s perception alone. It emerges in the space between them. As shadows require both a body and a light source, so too does interpretation require presence — a viewer willing to look and relate. In this shared encounter, the intangible is briefly given form, and flatness opens into depth.

Cooray has been featured in group presentations at JDA Perera Gallery, Colombo (2014, 2015, 2018, 2017), Lionel Wendt Gallery, Colombo (2019) and the Sapumal Foundation, Colombo (2018). Cooray’s artwork is featured in notable private collections including the UJF Collection, Taru Villas and the Sangakkara Collection and has been published in the Imago Mundi Book Project by the Benetton Foundation.