Painting Descartes
A wet sucking tongue leaves traces during the act of counting, fragile unreliable traces, momentarily traces, keeping memory for a short moment, a moment which lasts longer than a breath or a sound, a moment which is shorter than the timespans memorized by scratching, carvings and written letters. Karmakar puts Descartes into question. He puts Descartes into question, perhaps because he is a painter and perhaps painting puts generally logic and speech based reasoning into question.
Painting puts the light of reason into question. Not any light, but the specific light of mathematical reasoning, which Descartes made famous. It is a light, which is fighting contradiction. It is the light of either or nor, of right or wrong.
Painiting cannot be right or wrong. Painting is about intensity, about grades and shadows gradually dimininishing light or emphasizing light.
Painting is about continua. The logic of wether or not is not about continua. It is about discreteness. Karmakars paintings are not discrete. They are intense. Painting Karmakar creates an intensity which spans from attraction to repulsion, from coition to cognition. Thus his paitings, thus painting in general becomes a challenge of any discrete distinction. It throws us into the mesmerizing abyss of conflicting extremes.
Nils Röller New Delhi/Sanskriti Kendra