A Reading Path Down a Rabbit Hole: Sujith S.N.

Architectural Digest India

Dialogue, 2016 (Architectural Digest India)

The Statesman

When I realised that the pandemic was not ending anytime soon, I started digging into my imagination for inspiration. I built the whole set of works based on my imagination. The title ‘Emphasizing Stillness’ has been inspired by David Hockney’s picture by the same name which freeze-frames the scene, loading it with tension and expectation for what might happen next.

Swan Song 3 (Open Magazine)

Believing in practising his art every day with a view to sharpen his language in terms of thinking, Sujith says that he has always been very particular about the colour he uses in his works to represent certain creations.

ArtAsiaPacific

The Kochi-based artist’s architectural background is evident throughout these works. Built structures emerge against dense foliage and bodies of water, their juxtaposition creating a tension that permeates the artworks. The architectural forms could represent the colonization of indigenous land, or more broadly, human encroachment upon the remainders of India’s untouched natural world.

Swansong, 2016 (Architectural Digest India)

Open Magazine

Sujith doesn’t draw or paint. When he begins, he scribbles, and part of his initial artistic anxiety stems from trying to ascertain the fate of his scribbling in terms of scale. This is a significant part of his initial decisionmaking process. Should the format be largescale or small? He tries to translate this visual strategising into literary terms, for my better comprehension. “Do you want to write a novel or short story?”

Sujith SN | Untitled (Series: Prelude) | 2024 | Watercolour on paper | 12 x 16 Inches (Sakshi Gallery)

He tells me he begins, usually, with a rust-coloured wash and builds on top of that. Sometimes he goes up to 15 washes. Sometimes he is sure a wash was a mistake, and that knowledge pleases him. It is what makes the process feel theatrical.

“That is the beauty of watercolour, that is the complication of watercolour,” he says. He perceives oil as a medium in which it’s possible to hide your mistake beneath a coat of paint, while with charcoal, one can simply rub over, but with watercolour, the error is not as easy to erase, which he is sure lends to the medium an element of performativity.

River without a bend (Open Magazine)

Sujith S.N., Untitled, 2024, Tempera on paper, 30 x 72 in (76.2 x 182.9 cm) SNSUJ060 (Aicon)

Artforum

Caravaggio’s dramatic use of lighting has been an inspiration for many of Sujith’s works; one of the “Prelude” works on view here, rendered in swaths of inky blue and darkish red, recalled Mark Rothko.

Untitled 10, 2018, Watercolor on paper, 10 1/2 × 14 1/2 in | 26.7 × 36.8 cm (Artsy)

Artville Academy

Influences from 20th century Stieglitz School photographer Ansel Adam’s works are evident in a number of Sujith’s works as they convey similar desolate, reclusive and volatile cityscapes as his 1941 work Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. Sujith is also strongly influenced by Bosch and Bruegel.