Kanishka Raja
Kanishka Raja
Kanishka Raja was born in Calcutta, India and lives and works in New York City. In Kanishka Raja’s depicted realms, private and public domains from disparate global settings interlock in a complex visual field comprised of multiple panels and variegated perspectival windows. Raja charges these lush and energetic domains with pulsating patterns drawn from his engagement with textile design and ornament. Inspired by Italian 15th Century “Ideal City” paintings that proposed model urban landscapes and demonstrated the principles of perspective, Raja’s new works are windows onto contemporary urban societies. He presents spatially and contextually incongruent views through settings ranging from banal office spaces, to communal points of meeting. Raja lends a painterly, hand-honed quality to the works, creating composite realms that capture notions of both the technological and the handmade. His work has been exhibited widely in the United States, India, and Europe. Raja is a recipient of the 2011 Joan Mitchell Foundation award in painting. In 2004, he received the ICA/Digitas Artist Prize from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. His work is included in the collections of the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA and the Meadows Art Museum, Dallas, TX.
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Press
Kanishka Raja: I Have Seen the Enemy and It Is Eye
May/June 2009
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