The Painter as a Gatecrasher

Atul Dodiya, in his latest show The Gatecrasher, explores how much of viewing creates the art and its meaning

- SAMIYA CHOPRA

Growing up in Mumbai, artist Atul Dodiya was fascinated by cinema posters, calendar art, and the lively street visuals around him. Over time, he realised that painting was the best way for him to explore ideas about history, identity, and the world around him. Art became his natural way of understanding and expressing his thoughts. His worldview is shaped by this. It is neither stridently agitational nor comfortably neutral; it is reflective, layered, and insistently democratic. Drawing from figures like Gandhi, cinema, poetry, and art history, he revisits the idea of India as a plural, argumentative space, often meditating on violence, memory, censorship, and the fragility of institutions. His politics lie in nuance: a defence of secular, liberal values; a scepticism of absolutism; and a belief that art must remain a site of ethical inquiry in turbulent times.

In the last four decades, a common thread that has tied together all of the 67-year-old artist's works is not similarity in style but the sheer uniqueness.