The Guild Art Gallery is delighted to present Pooja Iranna's first Solo show in Mumbai titled 'Metaphorical Mathematics'. This show is an extension of her solo show at the Chitrakala Parishad Bangalore sponsored by The Guild in 2003.

Pooja Iranna obtained her Masters in Painting from The Delhi College of Art. She was awarded Charles Wallace India Trust Award by the British Council in 2002 to work at Wimbledon school of Art, London where she also held her solo show titled "Reflection". Some of the present body of works evolved out of the works done at the Wimbledon school of Art, London.

Pooja Iranna has always been interested in architecture and the representation of it in her art. She has both attempted to communicate something of the power and presence of architecture as well as employed images of architecture as metaphors for society and her own personality. 

"More recently, Pooja has been attracted to modern and contemporary architecture and their potential for creative manipulation. The geometrical complexities of Islamic architecture has given way to a Modernist grid and its permutations, a more straight-forward geometry perhaps but one still loaded with significance. Artists such as Sol Lewitt, Agnes Martin and Carl Andre exploited the potential of the grid in art practice some thirty years ago but today, with the advent of post-modernism, computer technology and digital imaging, the grid has taken on increased ambiguities and associations. Pooja's interest in the grid has been in the possibilities for unlimited variations within its repetitive structure, in its accommodation of idiosyncrasies and its merging with other forms and structures. Windows, doors and staircases often break the regularity of the grid, to say nothing of the reflections found within the glass skins of many buildings or the pulse of life which moves through them.

In summation, Pooja Iranna's works may seem highly iconoclastic in the context of an Indian art scene still very much infatuated with the human figure. Yet her works, though entirely devoid of human images, are very much about the consciousness of the figure and its placement in and experience of space. This experience is both physical and visual, both in real time and in memory. Pooja's work attempts to trace the effects of architecture on the emotions and the psyche, attempts to find traces of our emotional and psychological lives in the structures and patternings of architecture. Her's is a struggle to find unique expressions of her own experiences, to acknowledge the distortions and manipulations that play with our emotional lives, and to create elaborate scenarios through an economy of means." 

                                                                                                                                                   Peter Nagy 


The basic medium used for expression in this show is digital. She has worked on her digital photographs with the computer and in a few cases also worked further on the images. These are assembled together to form the final work. Her creations this time ranges from miniature size to installations on the floor.

Metaphorical Mathematics opens on Saturday, the 19th June and continues until 3rd July. The artist would be present on the opening day and also couple of days after the show opens. 



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