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Existing in a realm far removed from the tactile reality of the surroundings, Anupa Perera’s still-life paintings are whimsically insidious while occasionally serving as snapshots of romanticised pathos. Dreaming of Candies and Guns toys with the viewer’s sensibility. It judges their ability to perceive. Perera’s paintings often act as cyphers, waiting to be decoded by the viewer.
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The mise-en-scène created by Perera offers insight into the peculiar lens through which the artist views the world. His practice is rooted in attempts to capture mundane items while emphasising the correlation between light, composition, and colour. However, in Perera’s work, these quotidian objects become narrative devices that subtly essay his observations of the everyday.
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EXHIBITION INSTALLATION
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Laced with a sense of nostalgia, Perera’s still-life compositions often draw from the rustic life of the island’s hinterlands. Cheap plastic buckets, plain-coloured porcelain cups, and stone mortars and pestles offer a charming picture of domesticity. Interjected with blue olives and luscious apples, it becomes an ironic play on the ideas of abundance often depicted within the genre. Instead of romanticising the idyllic nature of rural existence, the artist’s subversion of the theme offers a wry commentary on the struggles that define life in these regions.
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In Perera’s peculiar imagination, Freedom takes the form of incomprehensible chaos. Levitating in defiance of gravity, a bucket of water remains still while paper boats float in disarray. Filtered through the image of a plastic toy, the Crying Unicorn contemplates a civilisation desensitised to war, in which children become victims in a geopolitical playground of death and violence. The images rest on the giddy dissonance where logic seemingly disintegrates.
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Dreaming of Candies and Guns : Anupa Perera
Past viewing_room
