Untitled

A well-known muralist and one of India’s seminal abstractionists, Shanti Dave has long explored the mysteries of lost civilisations and undeciphered scripts in his works, many of which are large in scale, such as this Untitled work. Dave uses the encaustic technique to build up his paintings in relief, their tactile nature evocative of elements terrestrial and celestial. Here, he juxtaposes layers of paint with scripts on tablets like messages from the past, evoking a landscape that cradles both past and present. The gradation of palette from dark to light as the eye moves up the canvas adds to the drama of visualising time as a bystander in the cosmos.