Swapna Das, “Becoming”

by Lynn Trimble Eye Lounge, Phoenix, Arizona

Exhibition continues through August 11, 2024

July 20, 2024

Swapna Das, “Distinctive Identity,” 2024, ceramic, 7 x 13 x 13”. All images courtesy of the artist.

Curved abstractions with tentacle-like forms infuse the work of Phoenix-based Swapna Das. Her current exhibition, “Becoming,” reveals the evolution of her creative process towards three-dimensional form even as it probes the existential complexities of living in a state of flux.

Centered on small-scale, hand-crafted ceramic works, “Becoming” demonstrates how Das brings explorations of shape, texture, and movement to her own spiritual practice, which is represented here as an ever-changing journey involving the ongoing interplay of shifting interior and exterior worlds.

Swapna Das, “Emergence,” 2024, ceramic, 16 1/2 x 13 3/4 x 3 1/2”.

Das’ earlier works include expressions of spiritual life in the form of large-scale charcoal drawings referencing the tenfold path of Buddhism. Here, the artist presents work on a smaller scale that effectively places questions of universal truth or mystic law into the intimate sphere of personal thought, emotion, and action. Within each person, this work suggests, is an entire world — or worlds.

“Becoming” includes twenty ceramic pieces made between 2020 and 2024, a 2016 charcoal on panel drawing, and thirty circular charcoal on paper drawings from 2017, each just six inches in diameter, which are part of her “Cycle of Life” series. Taken together, they suggest the dimensionality of the human experience with its vast variations on both the individual and the collective or cosmic level.

Swapna Das, “Primitive Self,” 2024, ceramic, 6 x 8 x 5 1/2”.

The most compelling sculptures embody the act of reaching, with the visual implication that the impulse exists on both a physical and spiritual level. With some pieces, such as “Distinctive Identity” (2024), the trajectory is directed inward. But with others, such as “Emergence” (2024) and “In Conversation” (2024), the tentacles reach towards another dimension or one another. In every case, movement abounds, conveying the notion that being is marked by perpetual transformation.

Das achieves an intriguing tension within this body of work that goes beyond the physical-versus-spiritual duality. Some forms take on an eerie quality, while others appear quite ethereal. The triangular “Primitive Self” (2024) prompts reflection on the dark, primal elements of human emotion. Conversely, the arched “Metamorphosis” (2024) intimates light and a sense of expansiveness.

Swapna Das, “Metamorphosis,” 2024, ceramic, 11 x 14 1/2 x 3 1/2”.

Through abstraction Das evokes a sense of mystery, even mysticism. It’s achieved in part through the use of elemental colors — primarily charcoal, white, and red but also black, orange, and tan — which speak to both the earthiness of the natural world, the internal composition of human bodies, and relationships between the two.

Absent familiar iconography within her compositions, the artist’s titles often serve as markers of possible meaning. For a bulbous ceramic piece that deviates from the symmetry of other works, its surface covered with seemingly random protuberances that hint at disharmony, for example, she’s given it the title “I failed myself again” (2020).

Swapna Das, "Mystic Law," 2016, charcoal on panel, 30 x 30”.

Circles are a recurring theme in “Becoming,” where they suggest non-linear conceptions of time, as well as pathways that are neither straight nor moving ever-forward. “The Cosmic Realm” (2024), with its round shape implying a contained reality, is particularly intriguing because of the spaces left open to reveal its inner contents, while also devising holes that allow elongated, curved forms to break through the surface. Within a series of small circular drawings, an intriguing mix of marks Das describes as tubes, strings, and cords play to the thread of life cycles that runs throughout both two- and three-dimensional work.

Amid so many beautifully convoluted abstractions, two of Das’s works carry particular weight. In the charcoal-on-panel drawing “Mystic law” (2016), we see an earlier expression of the artist’s spiritual and creative journey. In the sculpture “Samsara” (2024), its title referencing the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, one sees a wide-open center and bits of red light streaming through its periphery, not only suggesting the ongoing transformation of the artist, but helping us to feel our own transformation as well.

Lynn Trimble is a Phoenix-based art writer whose work ranges from arts reporting to arts criticism. During a freelance writing career spanning more than two decades, over 1,000 of her articles exploring arts and culture have been published in magazine, newspaper and online formats. Follow her work on Twitter @ArtMuser or Instagram @artmusingsaz