GR Iranna

G R Iranna is an artist whose work spans time and location. Born in 1970, it’s only been ten years since he began painting professionally, and his work is already mature and significant. Many of Iranna’s paintings represent pain as an abstract energy manifested graphically through damaged textures and razor-sharp cutting edges. His paintings have always deviated from a dominant postmodern logic. Instead, Iranna employs the idealistic, representational, and modernist vocabulary of Indian contemporary art. His most recent pieces all depict notions of resistance. At a look, one may detect a sensation of tremendous dynamic energy permeating the surfaces. Torment and resistance fuel this energy. Further study reveals that the surface conflicts are also present in those between one colour and another, between figure and hue, and between crudeness and skill. GR Iranna graduated from Gulbarga’s College of Visual Art in 1992 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Two years later, he received his Master’s degree in painting from the College of Art in New Delhi. Between 1999 and 2000, he served as artist-in-residence at Wimbledon School of Art in London.