Harsimran C Juneja
Manchester, 2021
Emulsions, Acrylics, Oil Sticks
and Oil Pastels on Canvas
and Oil Pastels on Canvas
108 x 86 in
274.3 x 218.4 cm
274.3 x 218.4 cm
Who Made the Fire Cracker Red? is both question and revelation. It gestures toward the instability of perception – how we see, what we choose to see, and what remains unseen. In Juneja’s hands, yellow becomes a way of thinking, a method of reckoning with the world’s contradictions, where humour, pain, and tenderness coexist in uneasy harmony.
In Harsimran C Juneja’s paintings, yellow is a living force, a language through which he thinks, feels, and releases. Across his canvases, it breathes in layers both literal and figurative, forming a terrain where conflict, wit, and reflection coexist. It is a hue that reveals as much as it conceals, carrying warmth even when it speaks of unease.
In Who Made the Fire Cracker Red?, Juneja turns this amber-hued gaze toward the dichotomies of seeing and being seen, his investigation spanning personal, political, social, and cultural contexts. While his raw, gestural brushwork draws from neo-expressionist and primitivist impulses, his work speaks unmistakably to the complexities of our post-truth, post-pandemic world.
The minimalistic landscape of Bathwick and everyday scenes like the one in Prior Park extend this inquiry into perception. Bathed in yellow, they appear as if viewed through a monochromatic lens that imbues everything with a heightened, dreamlike quality. Like the landscapes, the figures that inhabit this world, often anthropomorphic and charged with emotional intensity, also seem to emerge from the yellow itself –part human, part animal, part phantasm.
Text becomes a crucial interlocutor in Juneja’s practice, punctuating his canvases with satire and reflection. These ‘truisms’, terse, ironic, and self-aware, form a parallel system of meaning, reframing and complicating his visual narratives.
Who Made the Fire Cracker Red? is both question and revelation. It gestures toward the instability of perception – how we see, what we choose to see, and what remains unseen. In Juneja’s hands, yellow becomes a way of thinking, a method of reckoning with the world’s contradictions, where humour, pain, and tenderness coexist in uneasy harmony.
In Who Made the Fire Cracker Red?, Juneja turns this amber-hued gaze toward the dichotomies of seeing and being seen, his investigation spanning personal, political, social, and cultural contexts. While his raw, gestural brushwork draws from neo-expressionist and primitivist impulses, his work speaks unmistakably to the complexities of our post-truth, post-pandemic world.
The minimalistic landscape of Bathwick and everyday scenes like the one in Prior Park extend this inquiry into perception. Bathed in yellow, they appear as if viewed through a monochromatic lens that imbues everything with a heightened, dreamlike quality. Like the landscapes, the figures that inhabit this world, often anthropomorphic and charged with emotional intensity, also seem to emerge from the yellow itself –part human, part animal, part phantasm.
Text becomes a crucial interlocutor in Juneja’s practice, punctuating his canvases with satire and reflection. These ‘truisms’, terse, ironic, and self-aware, form a parallel system of meaning, reframing and complicating his visual narratives.
Who Made the Fire Cracker Red? is both question and revelation. It gestures toward the instability of perception – how we see, what we choose to see, and what remains unseen. In Juneja’s hands, yellow becomes a way of thinking, a method of reckoning with the world’s contradictions, where humour, pain, and tenderness coexist in uneasy harmony.
