What’s The Fuss About Sukant Khurana’s Art?

Recently at an art exhibition in New Delhi, I met Dr. Sukant Khurana. Sukant is a scientist, artist, writer, and entrepreneur.He was born in Delhi and has spent most of his professional career in United States. His science focusses on ameliorating human suffering and coming up with innovative data science solutions, while his art focusses on exploring the human condition.

Sukant has worked on efforts to encourage education, sustainable development, women empowerment, environmental, and healthcare issues. In his free time, Sukant keeps himself busy working on art projects, traveling off the beaten path, capturing wildlife on his camera or having long chats with friends over a cup of coffee.

We are making a movie about how people in India respond to paintings, titled,  “What’s the fuss about Sukant Khurana’s art?”
We would be recording people’s reaction to his art-style and interviewing all interested. We would also focus on people’s interaction with the artist. Do people respond to signature or art or both? What is the role of a gallery? We are making a movie and looking for more and more people to join in the making of the movie.

From 20th to 24th of April, his art-work, which usually range from creative destruction of one layer hiding the previous layers and process being central, all the way to destructive creation, where each layer is washed immediately after creation, leaving only a small contribution to overall art, would all be on display in Delhi. The title of painting exhibition is “From creative destruction to destructive creation”.

This is just a beginning. We would be working on next series on people’s response to work on neurological disorders and alcoholism. Following that, we are working on paintings that get revealed only after a transient top layer is washed away but the patron does not get to see the real painting until she or he takes it to their home. This social experiment would address the role of signature in art. We are also working on making a movie about making a movie about alcohol addiction. Dr. Khurana recently talked about these experiments in his TEDx DTU 2017 talk too.

The themes would be fake-smiles, circling while, and breaking free, an autobiographical journey, where each day of the exhibition, different art-works would be put up.

The venue is Cafe de art, G-14, Marina Arcade, Connaught Place, Outer Circle. New Delhi 110001.

Drop by:Date: 20th to 24th of April (for movie and exhibition)25th to 30th April (for exhibition only).Venue: Café de Art, G-14, Marina Arcade, Connaught Place, Outer Circle. New Delhi 110001

(Ashish Singh is a Senior Researcher at Institute of Governance, Policies and Politics, New Delhi, National Secretary of Azad Shakti Seva Sangthan Rae Bareli and a member of Advisory Board of Youth in Social Action Society. He can be contacted at- ashish.tiss@gmail.com)