Untitled

Artist: SOHAN QADRI Medium: Oil and mixed media on canvas Size: 39 x 39 inches ( 99 × 99 cm ) Year: Circa 1970s A vertical field of indigo, worked so finely that the canvas weave seems to breathe through the pigment, holds the center of this painting. Flanking it, two bands of encrusted, tufted marks in emerald, teal and violet register as pure surface: pigment built up, pulled and pressed into horizontal rows that crowd at the edges and loosen toward the middle. The contrast between the flat, hushed blue and the agitated, sculptural margins sets up a tension between void and vibration, absence and accumulation. Dark, almost lightless borders contain the composition and let the saturated hues glow from within. The near-symmetry recalls the discipline of a mandala or a loom, yet the hand is unmistakable: every ridge and stitch-like stroke records a slow, repetitive, deliberate gesture. Qadri, a Punjab-born artist who worked for decades in Denmark, drew on Tantric thought and meditation, treating color as a carrier of energy rather than description. Here that conviction becomes material. This is painting as durational act, where texture, rhythm and tone do the work of image, and where the viewer is invited to stand still and let the surface unfold.