Sandeep Mukherjee (born 1964) is an Indian-American artist based in Los Angeles who works in the areas of painting, drawing and

installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called ...

.Duncan, Michael. "Sandeep Mukherjee at Cottage Home and Sister," ''Art in America'', January 2009, p. 119.Padiyar, Aditi. "Traces and Tears," ''Domus'', August 2014. His work engages with the discourses of process art,

textile art Textile arts are arts and crafts that use plant, animal, or synthetic fibers to construct practical or decorative objects. Textiles have been a fundamental part of human life since the beginning of civilization. The methods and materials us ...

, modernist abstract painting and traditional

Eastern art The history of Asian art includes a vast range of arts from various cultures, regions, and religions across the continent of Asia. The major regions of Asia include Central, East, South, Southeast, and West Asia. Central Asian art primarily co ...

, balancing emphases on materiality, the physicality of the performing body and viewer, architectural space, and image.Myers, Holly. "Mountain and Valley: The paradoxes of Sandeep Mukherjee," ''LA Weekly'', 4–10 April 2008.Citron, Beth
"Critic’s Picks: Sandeep Mukherjee,"
''Artforum'', September 2010. Retrieved 29 March 2021.Rankine, Claudia
"Bleached racists and lynching trees: the show that's targeting white supremacy,"
''The Guardian'', 10 August 2018. Retrieved 31 March 2021. He is most known for his process-oriented, improvisational abstract works—often paintings in acrylic inks and paints on textured or film-like surfaces—that seek to represent mutable, flowing matter and liminal realms between subjective experience and objective information.Tsatsos, Irene. "Sandeep Mukherjee," ''California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists'', Los Angeles: California Community Foundation, 2009.Haja, Nilofar. "Sandeep Mukherjee receives the prestigious 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship," ''Architectural Digest'' (India), 10 May 2017. Mukherjee's early work was figurative; his later work, while abstract, is often likened to landscape and microscopic, natural or celestial phenomena.Knight, Christopher

''Los Angeles Times'', 4 October 2003. Retrieved 29 March 2021.Miles, Christopher. "Sandeep Mukherjee at Sister and Cottage Home," ''LA Weekly'', 23–9 May 2008, p. 49.Schuster, Robert
"Sandeep Mukherjee: New Work,"
Best in Show, ''The Village Voice'', 7–13 November., 2012. Retrieved 29 March 2021. ''Los Angeles Times'' critic

Christopher Knight Christopher or Chris Knight may refer to: Film and television *Christopher Knight (actor) (born 1957), American actor * Christopher Knight (filmmaker), blogger and filmmaker * Chris Knight (''Neighbours''), fictional character in the soap opera '' ...

described it as "ecstatic abstraction, built from color, line, movement and light. Like the dance done by a whirling dervish, who positions himself between material and cosmic worlds."Knight, Christopher
"A Mural of Color, Line and Light,"
''Los Angeles Times'', 25 November 2005. Retrieved 30 March 2021. Mukherjee has received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

and awards from the City of Los Angeles and California Community Foundation, among others.Muchnic, Suzanne
"Good money in bad times for L.A. artists,"
''Los Angeles Times'', 2 June 2009.''Artforum''
"Guggenheim Foundation Announces 2017 Fellows,"
News, 7 April 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2021.Rankine, Claudia. "Sandeep Mukherjee: Performing Site," ''COLA 2016: City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowships'', Los Angeles: City of Los Angeles/Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, 2016. He has exhibited internationally and his work belongs to public collections including those of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

(MoMA),Museum of Modern Art
Sandeep Mukherjee
Artists. Retrieved 1 April 2021.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...

,Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Sandeep Mukherjee
Collection. Retrieved 1 April 2021.

Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's ori ...

(MOCA),Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles
Sandeep Mukherjee
Collection. Retrieved 1 April 2021.

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) is a private modern and contemporary art museum with locations in New Delhi and Noida. Established in 2010, it is India's first private museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art. The core collection of ...

and Colección Jumex.Sareen, Hemant. "Sandeep Mukherjee," ''Take On Art'', February 2012, p. 135–6.Pomona College
Sandeep Mukherjee
People. Retrieved 29 March 2021. He lives and works In Los Angeles and has been a Professor of Art at Pomona College in

Claremont, California Claremont () is a suburban city on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, California, United States, east of downtown Los Angeles. It is in the Pomona Valley, at the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. As of the 2010 census it had a popul ...

since 2006.

Early life and career

Mukherjee was born in Pune, India, in 1964. He initially trained as an industrial engineer, earning degrees at Manipal Institute of Technology in Mangalore, India (BS, 1986) and

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

(MS, 1988). He worked for five years as an engineer at

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...

Tustin, California Tustin is a city located in Orange County, California, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In 2020, Tustin had a population of 80,276. The city is located next to the county seat, Santa Ana, and does not include the unincorporated community ...

, while making art in his off-time.Shaw, Michael
Sandeep Mukherjee
The Conversation: An Artist Podcast, with Michael Shaw, 2012. Retrieved 1 April 2021. After taking art courses at a community college between 1991 and 1993, he enrolled at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, earning a BFA in 1996, and completed his studies at

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

(MFA, 1999).Otis College of Art and Design
Sandeep Mukherjee
Outstanding Alumni. Retrieved 29 March 2021. Mukherjee first received critical attention for solo exhibitions at Margo Leavin Gallery and the

Pomona College Museum of Art The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, known colloquially as the Benton, is an art museum at Pomona College in Claremont, California. It was completed in 2020, replacing the Montgomery Art Gallery which had been home to the Pomona College ...

, in Los Angeles, and group shows at California State University, MOCA Los Angeles ("Conversations," 2003), and the

Hammer Museum The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...

.Duncan, Michael. "L.A. Portraiture: Post Cool," ''Artnet'', October 1999.Donohue, Marlena. "Continuing and Recommended," ''Art Scene'', February 2004, p. 21.Miles, Christopher
"Hard-Boiled Wonderland,"
''Artforum'', June 2001. Retrieved 29 March 2021.Knight, Christopher

''Los Angeles Times'', 7 February 2003. Retrieved 29 March 2021. Since that time, he has had solo exhibitions in Bangladesh, Germany, India and the U.S., at

Pitzer College Pitzer College is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. One of the Claremont Colleges, the college has a curricular emphasis on the social sciences, behavioral sciences, international programs, and media studies. Pitzer is k ...

, Sister and Chimento Contemporary (California), Brennan & Griffin (New York), Project 88 (Mumbai) and the Dhaka Art Summit, among others.Binlot Ann. "The Dhaka Art Summit gives Bangladesh a Global Spotlight," ''Forbes'', 22 February 2016. He also appeared in group exhibitions at MoMA,

BravinLee programs 300px, James Siena rug for BravinLee editions BravinLee programs is a contemporary art gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City. The gallery's programs support the exhibition of works on paper, artist books, public art projects, and ...

, and the MAK Center at the

Schindler House The Schindler House, also known as the Schindler Chace House or Kings Road House, is a house in West Hollywood, California, designed by architect Rudolph M. Schindler. The house serves as headquarters to the MAK Center for Art and Architecture ...

.Doshi, Riddhi. "A Dance of Colors," ''Hindustan Times'', 4 September 2011.Wood, Eve. "Symmetry," ''Art Papers'', July/August 2006, p. 63.

Work and reception

Since earning his MFA, Mukherjee has produced drawings and paintings on paper and Duralene—a translucent, vellum-like polymer film that simulates the slick luminosity of celluloid.Pagel, David
"Thrilling Images of Nature Throw Caution in the Wind,"
''Los Angeles Times'', 22 September 2000. Retrieved 30 March 2021.Miles, Christopher
"Sandeep Mukherjee,"
''Artforum'', January 2006. Retrieved 29 March 2021. This work has generally had both a sculptural presence, through surface manipulations (creases, folds, indents and pinpricks), and an architectural aspect, through multi-panel, mural-like works that traverse walls, turn corners and interact with the light of their spaces. Initially, these were minimal, finely drawn, embossed and incised drawings of nude figures floating in ethereal color fields, with erotic overtones that derived from both their subjects and skin-like surfaces. In the mid-2000s, he shifted to process-oriented abstractions applied and reworked with spontaneous, rhythmic gestures using brushes, concrete brooms, carved rolls, sponges and Q-tips; they evoke the physicality of the body and their own making while suggesting natural and geological phenomena, cosmological events and topographic maps.Taft, Catherine
"Critic’s Picks: Sandeep Mukherjee,"
''Artforum'', June 2008. Retrieved 29 March 2021. Author

Claudia Rankine Claudia Rankine (; born September 4, 1963) is an American poet, essayist, playwright and the editor of several anthologies. She is the author of five volumes of poetry, two plays and various essays. Her book of poetry, '' Citizen: An American L ...

compared Mukherjee's "mode of erasure hatpeels back years of work … put aside, returned to and painted over" to the study of racial history, which creates depth of field by pulling forward texts and events "alive or dead to the imagination depending on where you are standing."Rankine, Claudia
"Claudia Rankine Writes to Thomas Jefferson"
''The Washington Post'', 28 August 2015. Retrieved 6 April 2021. Critics liken the organic intersecting and spiraling forms, complex surfaces and patterning, and deep saturated colors of Mukherjee's imagery to the work of experimental " direct" filmmakers (e.g., Oskar Fischinger, James Whitney and Len Lye) and his sculpting of light and phenomenological focus to the Southern California Light and Space movement. Writers also often attribute contemplative, spiritual or romantic dimensions to his work, due to its philosophical explorations of blurred boundaries between science and art, the subjective and objective, and space and time; he is often linked to the earlier "spiritual abstraction" of artists such as

Lee Mullican Lee Mullican (December 2, 1919 – July 8, 1998) was an American painter, curator, and art teacher. He was an influential member of the Dynaton Movement. Early life and education Lee Mullican was born on December 2, 1919, in Chickasha, Oklah ...

Jay DeFeo Jay DeFeo (March 31, 1929 – November 11, 1989) was a visual artist who first became celebrated in the 1950s as part of the spirited community of Beat artists, musicians, and poets in San Francisco. Best known for her monumental work ''The Rose' ...

Richard Pousette-Dart Richard Warren Pousette-Dart (June 8, 1916 – October 25, 1992) was an American abstract expressionist artist most recognized as a founder of the New York School of painting.Kimmelman, Michae"Richard Pousette-Dart, 76, Dies; An Early Abstract E ...

and

Lee Bontecou Lee Bontecou (January 15, 1931 – November 8, 2022) was an American sculptor and printmaker and a pioneer figure in the New York art world. She kept her work consistently in a recognizable style, and received broad recognition in the 1960s. Bont ...

Early figurative work (1999–2003)

Mukherjee's minimalist figurative work fused aspects of Asian art traditions with Western notions of subjectivity through shifting relations of figure and ground, light and space, and points of view.Knight, Christopher
"Alices Visit Alternate Realities in 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland,'"
''Los Angeles Times'', 15 June 2001. Retrieved 29 March 2021.Cooper, Jacqueline. "Sandeep Mukherjee," ''New Art Examiner'', December/January 2000–1, p. 50. ''Art in Americas Michael Duncan wrote that these drawings "suggest a fantastical, airy interior realm where rarified self-consciousness manifests as pure physicality."Duncan, Michael. "Sandeep Mukherjee at Margo Leavin Gallery," ''Art in America'', March 2001, p. 140–1. They consisted of multiple images of Mukherjee's own head and nude body meticulously rendered in pale colored-pencil contour lines, needle pricks and embossed or creased shapes, which floated through softly colored, monochrome fields incised with motifs of flowers, leaves, starbursts, and rippling water.Feldman, James. "Sandeep Mukherjee," ''Art Issues'', November/December 2000, p. 50. The complex Duralene and paper surfaces—irregular planes of folds, creases and tattoo-like perforations—absorbed and reflected light, casting shadows that shifted as viewers changed position to create a visual push-pull between abstraction and figuration, painting and sculptural relief. ''Los Angeles Times'' critic David Pagel suggested the drawings "fuse the heightened perceptual acuity of classic Light and Space installations with the pleasures of classic figurative imagery, in a powerfully original fashion."Carson, Juli. "Review 04: Sandeep Mukherjee," ''X-Tra'', Vol. 5, No. 3, 2003, p. 26–8. Mukherjee presented this work most notably in solo exhibitions at Margo Leavin Gallery in Los Angeles (2000, 2002) and the Pomona College Museum of Art (2004). The centerpiece of the 2002 show was a narrow, mural wrapping around four walls that featured self-portraits largely invisible at a distance, which were drawn, incised or creased on Duralene painted on the back with rich, flat pink, orange and yellow hues. Moving left to right, the piece progressed from delicate clusters of undulating heads to a large head and tumbling naked bodies growing to life-size on scored and folded fields of starbursts, stars and flowers, to wide-eyed, grinning heads. Critics suggest the work expresses a contemporary search for enlightenment and the self, with its indeterminate space evoking primal, prenatal memories or out-of-body experiences achieved through meditation, spiritual practice or sexual ecstasy; Christopher Knight called it "a gently epic narrative of sensual pleasure and extrasensory wonder."Ise, Claudine. "Sandeep Mukherjee," ''International Paper'', Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, 2003.

Abstract work (2004– )

In 2004, Mukherjee turned from figuration to complete abstraction, produced through varied, labor-intensive processes of brushing, dripping, daubing, dragging and erasing watery acrylic inks. He achieved a seemingly inexhaustible range of texture and pattern that suggested radiating mosaics, petrified stone, tree rings or mandalas, which he juxtaposed against largely white areas of linear rays and rippling forms sculpted in the Duralene surface.Geer, Suvan. "Sandeep Mukherjee at Sister," ''Artweek'', February 2006, p.16-–7. He presented this work in a solo exhibition at Sister in 2005, whose monumental centerpiece, ''Untitled (Centrifugal)'', was a five-panel, work of monochrome jewel-toned, spiraled rings and fields of embossed, radiating lines that bent and buckled the surface into sharply etched mountains and valleys of shadow and light. Between 2006 and 2010, Mukherjee continued to develop this work through several new cycles.Chang, Cind
"Seeing the mirrored images,"
''Los Angeles Times'', 16 February 2006. Retrieved 30 March 2021.Knight, Christopher. "Traces of nature on a grand scale," ''Los Angeles Times'', 16 May 2008. His exhibitions at Sister and Cottage Home (2008) presented kaleidoscopic compositions of overlapping and intertwined spirals set against areas of black, creased Duralene. Critics likened them to lyrical, avant-garde film-still blow-ups, solar emanations and microscopic cells; ''LA Weekly'' critic Christopher Miles described their effect as "woozy, liberating and haunting." Mukherjee countered these hallucinatory works with minimalist works and series, such as ''Untitled (Black Valley)'' (2008)—which featured three glossy black embossed starburst forms flanked by two large matte-black shapes—and the dense but spare "landscapes" of his black-and-white "Thicket" series (2009–10). The work in subsequent exhibitions at Project 88 (2011, 2014), Brennan & Griffin (2012) and Chimento Contemporary (2015) featured swirling, zigzagging and entwining sequences of ribbons that shifted between abstraction and suggestions of DNA strands and microscopic, botanic or cosmological forms. Their translucent green, brown, orange and yellow bands contained meticulously brushed striations dabbed in layered strokes and were set on black fields creased with webs of collapsing grids and protuberances (e.g., ''Splice'', 2012; the "Tear" and "Palimpsest" series, 2014–5). The Chimento show featured ''Mutual Entanglements,'' an enveloping, , two-wall mural whose sprayed and dragged brown, green, purple and indigo colors and organic abstraction suggested a lush tropical jungle. The mural was unusual in that its construction and orientation was indeterminate and fluid, with panels that—per Mukherjee's gallery instructions—could be installed in any direction or order and yet retain cohesion, despite the lack of a repeating pattern.Knight, Christopher

''Los Angeles Times'', 21 October 2015. Retrieved 29 March 2021. In installations from 2016 to 2020, Mukherjee has extended the dimensionality of his work beyond relief to full sculpture.Landesberg Paige, "To Watch and Be Watched," ''THE SEEN'', September 2018. The wall-piece ''Elemental'' (2016) employed eight folded aluminum panels whose colors and painted forms call to mind molten lava or an evolving universe.Davis, Genie
"Elemental/Marking Time, Descanso Gardens Sturt Haaga Gallery,"
''Art and Cake'', 30 November 2017. Retrieved 29 March 2021. In exhibitions at 68 Projects ("Molting the Fractured," Berlin, 2017) and The Kitchen ("On Whiteness," 2018) he presented hand-molded, human-sized aluminum works coated in acrylic that hung from the ceiling and reached the floor; the latter show's ''Tree Skin'' (2018) consisted of two pieces that reference oak tree trunks as a corporeal stand-in, evoking both callused and weathered flesh and the sites of lynching to address the violence perpetrated against non-white bodies.Yates, Anna Ruth. "5 Best NYC Exhibitions of 2018," ''APTLY'', 2018.

Recognition and collections

Mukherjee has received fellowships from the

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Olga and Simon Guggenheim in memory of their son, who died on April 26, 1922. The organization awards Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been ...

and Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e.V. (both in 2017), the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (COLA, 2015–6), and the California Community Foundation (2009).John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Sandeep Mukherjee
Fellows. Retrieved 29 March 2021.Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e.V

News. Retrieved 1 April 2021.California Community Foundation
Sandeep Mukherjee
Fellowship for Visual Arts. Retrieved 1 April 2021. He has been awarded public art commissions for permanent installations in Los Angeles—at SoFi Stadium and the

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

Headquarters in 2020—and in Toledo, Ohio, at the

James M. Ashley and Thomas W.L. Ashley United States Courthouse The James M. Ashley and Thomas W.L. Ashley United States Courthouse, formerly the United States Courthouse, Toledo, Ohio, is a courthouse of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio built in Toledo, Ohio, in 1932. It is n ...

, also in 2020.Avant, Tricia
"Sandeep Mukherjee and a Synchromatic Installation,"
Pomona College, News, 13 March 2020. Retrieved 1 April 2021. Mukherjee's work belongs to the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art,

,Hammer Museum
Sandeep Mukherjee
Collections. Retrieved 1 April 2021. Colección Jumex (Mexico City),

(New Delhi), Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Orange County Museum of Art,

Portland Art Museum The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it one of the oldest art museums on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the US. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum becam ...

San Jose Museum of Art The San José Museum of Art (SJMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum in downtown San Jose, downtown San Jose, California, United States. Founded in 1969, the museum holds a permanent collection with an emphasis on West Coast of the United Sta ...

,San Jose Museum of Art
''Untitled (Oblique 1)'', Sandeep Mukherjee
Objects. Retrieved 1 April 2021. and

Weatherspoon Art Museum The Weatherspoon Art Museum is located at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and is one of the largest collections of modern and contemporary art in the southeast with a focus on American art. Its programming includes fifteen or more e ...

, in addition to several private, corporate and college collections.Weatherspoon Art Museum
Sandeep Mukherjee, ''Untitled'', 2002
Objects. Retrieved 1 April 2021.Pitzer College Art Galleries
About the collection
Retrieved 1 April 2021.

References

External links

Sandeep Mukherjee official websiteArt Talks: Sandeep Mukherjee and Diana Campbell Bentancourt
Frieze, London, 2020
Sandeep Mukherjee
The Conversation: An Artist Podcast, with Michael Shaw
Sandeep Mukherjee
Studio visit, In The Make, March 2012 {{DEFAULTSORT:Mukherjee, Sandeep 21st-century Indian painters 21st-century American painters American abstract artists Artists from Los Angeles Indian contemporary artists Pomona College faculty University of California, Los Angeles alumni Otis College of Art and Design alumni 1964 births Living people University of California, Berkeley alumni American male painters