Lantern Structure 3

Long before his interest in tantra crystallised into paintings, Prabhakar Barwe’s works had disconcerted viewers with his ability to displace objects in relationship to the expected. This painting represents a phase when he approached space as both tangible and intangible, present and absent. The lantern structure here consists of criss-crossing beams creating a barrier. But is it keeping things out, or in? Is its purpose to restrict space, to form a barricade between the inside and the outside? Barwe’s representations of alternate ways of looking was at par with the modernist questioning of existing states of affair.