Lot 1085: ASHIM PURKAYASTHA

ASHIM PURKAYASTHA
(b. 1967)
Butterfly MAN; Nude Female
acrylic and ink on postage stamps
26 x 23 cm. (10 x 9 in.); 36.8 x 49.5 cm. (14 1/2 x 19 1/2 in.)
Painted in 2005-2006; Painted in 2004 (2)

Nude Female:
Mumbai, India, Sakshi Gallery, Ashim Purkayastha: Attached Wings, November - December, 2004.
Butterfly MAN:
New Delhi, India, Anant Art Gallery, Ashim Purkayastha: dilli dilwalon ki, 2006

Ashim Purkayastha: dilli dilwalon ki, exhibition catalogue, Anant Art Gallery, New Delhi, India, 2006 (illustrated, unpaged)

Ashim Purkayastha's oeuvre focusing on the iconography of the revenue stamp encompasses a wide range of media and manifestations. Oftentimes, Purkayastha attempts to alter the stamp itself and recreate it on canvas in ways that subvert and challenge both the greater institutions of India and the vehicles for revenue generation.

According to art historian Ranjit Hoskote, "The revenue stamp is the guarantee of a contractual obligation between the citizen and the State. In the course of his detailed, painstaking work, Purkayastha works over arrays of revenue stamps, marking them with miniature, stamp-size images based on photography or iconography [K] he re-stamps the stamp: he stigmatizes the abstract symbol of governance, superscribing it with the evidence of a collective life distorted by an aggressively politicized religiosity premised on exclusivist identities and the privileging of the cultural and numerically dominant Self at the cost of less favoured Others."(R. Hoskote, 'MARGIN/ALIA: A Response to Ashim Purkayastha's Recent Works, Ashim Purkayastha: Attached Wings, exhibition catalogue, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 2004, p. 4)