A solo exhibition by Jasper Daniels that opens on March 27, gathers fragments of a changing world
VINIKA VISWAMBHARAN
NT BUZZ
“I am trying to find my place in the art world,” says Jasper Daniels, an artist who grew up in Tamil Nadu, but now resides in Panaji.
And it is that search that sits at the centre of ‘What Remains’, his latest body of work, where the act of painting becomes less about arrival and more about staying with uncertainty.
Daniels has been drawing and painting since childhood. His journey into full-time practice, however, came only three years ago, after a stint as an advertising copywriter. The shift is telling. Where advertising demands precision and clarity, Daniels’ paintings resist both. “I can never be sure if my voice is fully formed. Or, if it will ever get fully formed,” he says. “For me, painting is an exercise in navigating life outside the canvas. This exercise both calms and terrifies me at the same time in
equal measure.”
That tension defines not only his work, but also his relationship with the studio. “I approach the studio like a refugee or a wanderer most times,” he says, framing the space not as one of control, but of searching. It is within this unsettled state that his images begin to take shape.
Daniels does not begin with a fixed image in mind. “I can never summon an image and create that on the canvas. At the same time, I can never replicate a scene,” he explains. “The image emerges slowly on the canvas as I work.”
What emerges is often unexpected. “Most of the time, I see mythical beings, and landscapes. Faces and human forms appear, too. The mood is sometimes sombre, sometimes quirky.” These shifting forms give his work a dreamlike quality, as though the paintings are uncovering something rather than
constructing it.
The title for his new solo show which opens at Fifteen by Nine Art Gallery, Panaji, on March 27 grows out of a similar process of reflection. Rather than pointing to a single moment, Daniels traces it back to a gradual awareness of change. “I am at a point where the world I grew up in is no longer the same,” he says. “In a busy city, I can still sense its older contours, its earlier pace. That familiarity appears for a moment, then disappears into what the city has become.”
It is this fleeting sense of continuity that shapes the exhibition. “What I see is only what has remained after everything that has shaped it has dissolved: ambition, hesitation, mistakes, doubt, and effort,” he says. “I recognise the same condition in my practice. That is where the title comes from.”
The works themselves are divided into two sets, one made with ink and the other with acrylic. While Daniels does not foreground material as a concept, the contrast is evident. Ink carries immediacy, a sense of risk, while acrylic allows for slower layering and revision. Together, they echo the push and pull that runs through his practice.
The exhibition however did not begin with a singular idea or event. “There was no one specific moment. The idea evolved gradually over many months,” he says, adding that in an environment where art is often consumed quickly, his work asks for something slower. “There are no clear narratives or immediate resolutions. The paintings sit in a space of ambiguity. I want viewers to linger, not decode,” he says. “That lingering is essential for me. My practice does not attempt to fix meaning or arrive at conclusions. It stays with what is unresolved, with what continues to shift and surface over time.”
(‘What Remains’ will be on view at Fifteen by Nine Art Gallery, Panaji, from March 27 to 29)
