Know for his vast, intricately detailed paintings that feel at once ancient and contemporary, Harsha’s work draws on the visual language of Indian miniature painting, folk traditions and pop culture – teeming with hundreds of tiny, stylised figures that read as hypnotic patterns from a distance and reveal wry commentaries on globalisation, work and industry up close.
This June, Victoria Miro in London will present a new body of paintings by Harsha titled Camel and the tent times (5 June – 31 July), expanding his ongoing ‘lamp grid’ series. Using rows of diyas – clay lamps whose flames and smoke form rhythmic, shifting patterns – Harsha builds compositions that move between order and movement, guiding the viewer across each canvas. Balancing structured grids with flickering, unstable elements, his paintings reflect on labour, belief, and the unseen forces that shape them.
These new works centre on the figure of the worker, poised between labour and rest, the everyday and the symbolic. Drawing on references from agricultural fields to iconic imagery like ‘Lunch atop a Skyscraper’, Harsha situates his subjects within suspended spaces. Rural and industrial scenes intersect with wider ecosystems of animals, commerce, and cycles of repetition, hinting at broader social and philosophical questions.
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