Between Skeletons and Sunsets: Interview with Matthew Krishanu
By Cleo Roberts
Portrait of MATTHEW KRISHANU. Photo by Kate Green. Image courtesy the artist.
London-based Matthew Krishanu paints in series, creating chapters of works based on his personal experiences and childhood memories growing up in Dhaka. Combining loose washes of color with thick definite lines, the characters in his compositions—framed against natural landscapes and domestic interiors—are enigmatic. The two boys who appear throughout his show, “The Sun Never Sets” at the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham, for example, have seemingly indecipherable expressions. Representing the artist himself and his older brother, the figures are a beguiling provocation, aimed at blurring perceptions of innocence with a sense of the children’s knowingness and agency. Krishanu’s interweaving of naivety, interdependence and assertions of childhood independence will be further explored in a group show at Compton Verney, “Childhood Now,” in March. AAP sat down with the artist to discuss his recent and upcoming exhibitions, reflecting on one’s childhood, and the motifs in his paintings.
