Measure and Decipher Spaces with Pratap Morey

Urban city landscapes change as we talk. Skyscrapers increase in number, and chawls are being renovated to accomodate the modern. In an attempt to capture these changing scapes, artist Pratap Morey’s first solo show, measure|decipher explores his preoccupation with the city’s shifting skylines. The artist uses a combination of digital photographic images, archival prints, architectural drawings and engravings in his paper works, that examine themes of displacement, construction and redevelopment.

Says architect Kaiwan Mehta about the show, ‘This space we exist (and live) in between insistent occupation of a projected fantasy and the hurried denial of the everyday reality produces citizens that have lost a sense of the measure of what it means to participate in human worlds…we start living in delirious worlds! Morey’s landscapes are an attempt to decipher these delirious worlds and cities we are all living in.’

5 Questions with the artist, Pratap Morey

1. Artistic Motivations “I have been living in Mumbai for the past 25 years, and have always been in transit. Over this period the city has changed a lot. The works in this show are my response to the situation.”
2. Inspirations “The city is continuously growing vertically, due to a lack of space.People who lived in chawls and older buildings had their own way of living, but now a new culture is being superimposed on them. As someone who is largely affected by growth and urbanisation, I felt inspired to address them directly through my work.”
3. On the wall at home “Nasreen Mohamedi and Imran Qureshi.”
4. Concerns that find a place in your art “This exhibition in particular is mainly about changing urban geography. My work is a response to the city as a continuously changing space.”
5. If not an artist, you would be… “I can’t imagine being anything else.”

measure|decipher is on display at Tarq, Mumbai (F35/36, Dhanraj Mahal, C.S.M. Marg, Apollo Bunder, Colaba) until December 5, 2015.