ARTFORUM: Sangram Majumdar

Certain artists settle easily and without trepidation into a credible style that allows them to proceed in an unencumbered, linear fashion; Sangram Majumdar is apparently not among them. A decade ago, it made sense for the critic Jennifer Samet to discuss the Kolkata-born New Yorker’s work under the rubric “painterly representation”; at that time his art was rather academic in character, with an affinity for restrained color enlivened by a sensitive touch. Fellow painter Kyle Staver noted—and not without admiration—“a stubborn and humorless aspect” to this approach. By 2013, Majumdar had mostly switched to abstraction, using planar yet complex space and a more energetic, even sometimes downright seductive palette, while still also exhibiting some realist paintings. However, one could still notice that at least a few of the ostensibly abstract pieces were based on observational experience: Take tilt, 2013, which derives from the form of a postcard rack. As far as stylistic resources go, Majumdar calls on the full panoply of classic modernism—though he insists that he can absorb anything, from Indian miniatures to video games.

July 1, 2019