Valentine’s Day might have passed in a blur of roses and dinner plans, but inside Srishti Art Gallery, love is being examined far more deeply. Arpan Sadhukhan’s solo exhibition, Death is Nothing But Love, is already on view, inviting visitors to slow down, stand still and look closely at what love really means in a world shaped by power, memory and the marketplace. Through woodcut prints and sculptural blocks, he builds a world that feels beautiful at first glance, but unsettled the longer you stand before it.
Explaining the premise of the show, Arpan begins, “The show is called Death is Nothing But Love. I’m working with the idea of consumerism. When one comes to power, they try to distract the history and re-modify it in their own agendas and propaganda.” For him, art must counter that erasure. “Art plays a major role in documenting true history. So, it’s a parallel history that they are documenting,” he adds.
The prints are dense and layered. Figures overlap with symbols, forms dissolve into shadow, and every inch of space feels charged. There is no empty calm. The darkness is deliberate. “Black to me is a colour. There are so many shades of gray to black. I’m just exploring the black,” Arpan expresses. The result is a series of works that appear stark yet complex, where even a moment of visual beauty carries tension beneath it.
That tension, he believes, mirrors the present. “I believe we are in dystopian reality. Although it looks very pleasing, it is not at all pleasing. My works are representing chaos. You can see there is a harmful thing going on inside it,” he explains.
The sculptures, carved from the same wooden blocks used for printing, extend this language into three dimensions. He begins with drawings, followed by cuts into wood, allowing the material to guide him. “If I like the drawing, then I start working on it. For the sculptures, I drew images and then started cutting it out. I just randomly put the pieces together,” Arpan shares. The outcome often surprises him. “Sometimes the rough sketch that I paint, and the final product, are both very different,” he reflects.
In this exhibition, love is not soft or sentimental. It is complicated, contradictory and deeply political. In that contradiction, Arpan finds both death and devotion existing side by side.
The exhibition is on view until March 30.