RATHIN BARMAN, JULIEN SEGARD

Julien Segard’s work explores the severe edges perpetuated by urban structures, free flowing contours of nature’s invasion into these structures and the shared intimacy that grow into each other’s spaces and claim each as their own. In recognising characteristic paradoxes in the field of view through his work, Segard reveals glaring blind-spots in our vision of the landscape and builds a thread of connections through works on paper and paintings. Much like portraits of a city, the slivers of roads, underpasses and flyovers that populate Segard’s work stand as sentinels in the wastelands of a megacity.

For over a decade, Rathin Barman has been exploring the nature of built structures and what lies beyond the visible. Applying an anthropological lens in sculpting and drawing, Barman forms long lasting relationships with inhabitants of old homes in North Kolkata, which are in various stages of disrepair, demolition and have long lost their past grandeur. Like trees with shared roots, these homes are polycentric, since most of these structures are interlocked and inseparable and so are its people and their personal histories and relationships with each other. Barman explores this polycentrism of relationships through a body of sculpture using materials of construction such as concrete, iron and brass.

For Segard and Barman, architecture does not remain merely an object for visual representation and instead becomes an extension of nature in the man-made realm. Similar to a forest that engages and heightens all our senses to create and envelopes with stimuli, the built environment addresses all the senses simultaneously. While Barman is interested in the precise conjunction of the disembodiment of the built form and the simultaneous renewal of future possibilities, Segard’s work offers a fleeting glance into his transient and disruptive world, laden with intuitive interpretations of what he sees around him, flirting with chance and play, allowing a sideways view into our own environment.

Julien Segard, b. 1980, Marseilles, France, lives and works between Goa & Marseilles. Rathin Barman, b. 1981, Tripura, India, lives and works in Kolkata, India.