Prithvi Dev

Exhibition Catalogue

Streams of Consciousness

18th-20th May, 2024. Open Palm Court Gallery, India Habitat Center, New Delhi.

A world with ever-ballooning volumes of information and complexity. Our thoughts continuously jump from one thing to another. Spell-bound by distraction. Our vision is continuous, and we see both directly and indirectly. We constantly observe people, objects, scenes, and screens, soaking in an overload of detail. Our viewpoints change and the base keeps shifting. This ‘stream of consciousness’ rubric is meditative when the process pours through the soul of visual art, writing, and creation of all sort - capturing life as an ever-evolving vibration. Intricate patterns of organic energy.

In this chaotic river-dance flowing through our minds, moments of stillness and observation provide a clear counterpoint. Letting go of structure, coherence, of the rules of visual composition to glean a reflective insight of one’s subconscience. Therapeutic and transformative, internally and aesthetically. This approach of self-inquiry is exhilarating when the narrative is put onto paper. A snapshot. A slice of consciousness.

This exhibition, Streams of Consciousness, is a series of meditations on life and nature. The vast cosmos. The illusion of consciousness. Holographic reality. Explorations in visual and conceptual art-making, architecture, perception, and mathematical reasoning. Prithvi Dev showcases multiple series of drawings and sculptures made over the last 8 years, split into three themes. Firstly, a personal stream of consciousness journey in a visual style that Dev has evolved over many years of his practice. It is aesthetically original and intricately detailed. Secondly, intricate and realistic bird stipplings that he began making during a piqued fascination of the avian world. And lastly, Dev exhibits a series of kinetic sculptures. These are handheld-motion objects of art that explore concepts in 3-dimensional geometry, sacred interconnectedness, and the illusion of perception.

Stream of Consciousness series. 2017.

Pen and ink, markers, on paper. 8.5 in x 5.5 in

Presented is a set of highly intricate drawings depicting personal realisations and experiences. The inspiration for the narrative of this series comes from insights in the co-evolution of human hands and the brain, of dexterity and "intuition pumps", as well as a visual system with a broad range of depth perception. The pieces have many visual influences, and each illustrates a different story or idea.

Dev mixes observed and imagined scenes from immediate vicinities and through self-informed compositional elements directed by hand, eye and mind (in that order). Every element of the composition informs all future mark-making, and is complete when the canvas (and his mind) is visually saturated. This process creates a feedback-loop that allows for a wholistic portrayal of and during the act of drawing.

Eye for the Ethereal, 2022.

Pen and ink, markers, on paper. 8.5 in x 11 in

A higher aim. The root and unravelling of causality. What does it really mean to be enlightened, is it just a momentary state of being? These are the questions Dev explores through ‘Eyes for the Ethereal’. Drawn in a ‘Stream of Consciousness’ visual style and aesthetic, this triptych grew organically in moments of silence and solitude.

Kali at the Birth of the Universe series, 2022.

Pen and ink on acid-free paper. 16.5 in x 11.5 in

A series of highly intricate drawings depicting the powerful Indian goddess Kali. She is often visually portrayed in a rage. In ‘Kali at the Big Bang’ she is seen inviting the viewer to witness the emergence of light through cosmic background radiation, and the path of our solar system through the galaxy. In “Kali at the Birth of the Universe’ we see Kali creating the unfolding first hand. In ‘Dance of Kali’ she is seen dancing atop the dimensions of light, spacetime, and consciousness in a playful light. All drawn in Dev’s intricate and surreal ‘stream of consciousness’ aesthetic.

Indian Birds, series, 2016.

Universe Box, 2019.

Hand-constructed using lazercut acrylic sheets, digitally-designed stickers, stainless steel rivets, jump rings, and brass chain.

Fractal Box (or Moire Box), 2019.

Hand-constructed using lazercut acrylic sheets, digitally-designed stickers, stainless steel rivets, jump rings, and brass chain.

Fuller’s iconic jitterbug inspired design scientists such as Joseph Clinton, Duncan Stewart and H.F Verheyen to create and classify a family of expanding-contracting structures, known as ‘dipolygonoids’. These handheld transformers delight through movement. Their regularity, symmetry, and binary alternating interconnectivity are fascinating nested alterations to regular Platonic and Archimedean solids. Furthermore, their rotational translation embeds them in one another. Kinetic art that requires handheld interactions allow for a more personal conceptual experience. These sculptures are a set of graphic geometrical models that builds on their work with this in mind. Dev makes novel explorations of analog illusion and moving-image techniques on these structures, considering materiality, transparency, and appropriate symbolism. Motion graphics here are inherent in the structures themselves, as opposed to being digital projections. Since dipolygonoids require time to expand and contract, they allow for any concept that takes place through time as ripe ground for visualisation, be it lunar and solar cycles, image sequences, or optical patterns. The viewer’s deliberate action allows for the potential animation to actuate. Using tools of radial and grid lines, dots, regular polygons, and cut out animation, Dev aims to simulate ideas such as the holographic principle, converging moire, quasicrystal, and dot patterns, and the interconnectedness of atomic through universal scales of reality.

Visual Linguistics, 2018.

Pen and ink, markers, on graph paper. 29.5 in x 38 in

An attempted visual understanding of understanding itself. Language is the structure of interpretation in our brain, and mathematics is its purest form of communication. Evolution, emergence, complexity and constructivism are seen through the lens of Reimann and Ramanujan, as explained by popular math and physics channels online. The act of note taking is a staple of the indian education system and the result here is a artistic look into the weaves of conceptual thinking.