Understanding the nature of time as cosmological and psychological, and as fantasy and metaphysics, Remen Chopra’s works are a structured fluid of sketches, photography, video , to construct complex monochromatic, performance-based montages that are constantly reaching for and retreating from an endless realm of surfaces and layers to create the contrasts of real and endorsed time. Remen Chopra was born in 1980 in New Delhi and educated in Italy and is based in Mumbai. Further using the reference of time as a moral concept, where the past, present and future merge to understand the transformation of the self, her work addresses the new aesthetic of beauty, while drawing strongly from elements of history. The works convey the deep complexity of time as a state, wherein, lies the redemption of man.
Read MoreThe montages she explores are those of imagery and concepts, which are drawn significantly from the aesthetics of theatre. The works are transparently layered with elements of performance and the figurative is placed in the medium of time in relation to light, sound and transient occurrences. She explores narrative structures, weaving together sheaths of incidents and thoughts that are paused for a fleeting moment, thereby making the ephemeral, eternal. The references that one experiences through her work are interlaced with private memories and perspectives, causing personal and social histories to collide.
Chopra’s practice delves into the psychological realm of human consciousness. Creating this through the theatrical realm, her work conceptualizes detailed staged sets, during which she collaborates with the performers who become the represented subjects of her works and drawings. The feminine form has a particularly strong presence in her work, and represents eternal and immutable qualities of regeneration, nurturance and balance. Her works envision a new world order, defined by empathy and harmony, and engendered by a re-establishment of the cosmic balance between masculine and feminine energies.
The rendering of the image layers with detailed transparency signify a strong spiritual connection with the search for inner truth, ascension and salvation. She works toward creating a revelation that is striated within the limitless layers of history, time and truth. The cultural aspects of going back to the Renaissance and returning are factors that she has been addressing with the integration of perception, sensation and emotion. There is an innate gesture of signifying a change in the act of sorting and cleaning, through an attempt to embrace the visible but inaccessible harmony and truth. Understanding the figurative as an exponent of balance and harmony, she delves into the genre of the figurative in art to inquire about notions of aesthetics and beauty in order to create what she calls the 'new renaissance'.
