Untitled

This work continued engagement with the idea of landscape as both a physical and metaphysical construct. Rendered in a restrained monochromatic palette of blacks, greys, and whites, the composition moves beyond representational terrain to evoke a contemplative, almost transcendental space. The stark contrasts and nuanced tonal gradations invoke the visual language of chiaroscuro, allowing Sharma to manipulate light and shadow not merely as formal devices but as conduits for emotional and psychological depth.

In this work, the topography unfolds as a deep gorge or valley surrounded by rugged, eroded hillsides. The eye is drawn inward through the play of dark recesses and illuminated passages, where the faint glimmer of light on the horizon suggests both distance and revelation. This orchestration of luminosity within darkness recalls the Romantic preoccupation with the sublime—nature as vast, powerful, and humbling in its mystery. However, Sharma reinterprets this tradition through a contemporary sensibility: his landscape is stripped of narrative and human presence, functioning instead as a meditative field of silence and introspection.

Sharma’s practice can be situated within the lineage of postmodern abstraction and landscape modernism in India. Emerging in the late 20th century, his work resonates with the philosophies of artists such as Ram Kumar and Paramjit Singh, who redefined the Indian landscape not as scenic depiction but as an internalized terrain of memory and emotion. Like them, Sharma constructs an atmospheric spatiality where form dissolves into tone and texture, blurring the boundaries between realism and abstraction. Yet, his commitment to monochrome and his disciplined control of painterly gesture lend the work an austerity that is distinctly his own.

The painting’s surface reveals Sharma’s mastery of layering and erasure. Thin washes and dense impastos coexist, producing a tactile rhythm that mirrors geological time and transformation. The absence of colour heightens the viewer’s sensitivity to texture and light, transforming the canvas into an exploration of visual perception itself. The faint illumination emerging from behind the hills may be read as a metaphor for transcendence, the persistence of hope, spirit, or revelation amid obscurity.

Ultimately, Untitled (2013) captures Vinod Sharma’s philosophical dialogue with nature and temporality. It embodies the duality of presence and absence, of silence and revelation, situating his oeuvre within a broader discourse on the landscape as an existential and aesthetic inquiry.