For abstract artist Sushant Sharma, aka SushiSurge, being born and raised in the city of Chandigarh played a major role in shaping his creative streak. Inspired by the rich cultural and architectural heritage of the city, he grew up inseparable from his sketchbook and developed an interest towards art history early on. As the years passed by, art became his means of expressing himself, eventually leading him to Srishti Institute of Art and Design for a bachelors, and finally, NID for a masters. It was at NID that SushiSurge developed his distinct identity, experimenting heavily with style and technique that led to his monochrome visual grammar. Below, the artist takes us through this practice, his process, and more.
The Practice
My art practice talks about complex human narratives, our identities and the deep personal conflicts we navigate through in our everyday lives, eventually translating into pieces that comment on and investigate such themes with a minimal abstract language. I also believe that my art belongs beyond just the canvas, so I often thrive to experiment with different mediums, materials and formats.
The Visual Grammar
Other than my love for simplicity, I find working with black and white quite liberating. It helps me focus on expressing my narrative in a bold manner. The restrictions around working with a single colour also poses a lot of challenges when I try to represent an object or a scene in my compositions, which I find very intriguing. It is also undeniably a reflection of my own self and how I am in my personal life.
The Process
I work heavily with the concept of ‘Reductionism’, which refers to reducing elements, characters and scenes to their core essence. Often questioning ‘how much can I take away from a face for it to still look like one’. The core idea of my process is to focus on the key emotional aspects while chiseling off all that is not necessary — both visually and conceptually.
However, the start of my artworks is often very messy, as most of my art pieces begin by me being emotionally influenced by a theme, sightings, conversations, and most importantly, the people around me. I start out by attaching characters and scenes to these emotions by sketching them in my journal, iterating on how their gestures can best evoke what I am feeling. Post this, it's all about iterating on different mediums till I see characters emerge that can convey that emotion to the viewer.
The Emerging Artist
With the Indian art culture thriving and welcoming so many new artists. I have been really fortunate to meet collaborators and a great audience who understands and connects with my art practice — a sincere bond that also gives me a platform to put out the stories I truly believe in. However, in terms of my journey, I believe I am on a long path to connect to a lot more people and be heard as an Indian abstract artist internationally — a goal that I build towards everyday in my studio.
The Aim
My artworks aim at encouraging people to reflect and empathise with the characters I make as they often share very similar stories to the viewers themselves.With every showcase, both online and offline, I hope my audience absorbs each face, each tear and each conflict represented in my art pieces, taking that perspective beyond my exhibits into their own lives with a deeper thought and reflection.
Words Unnati Saini
Date 14-04-2023