Amitabh Kumar is a Bangalore based artist and educator. Painting in public spaces for over a decade, Kumar’s practice began as an exercise of self-exploration. While his practice is now informed by multiple stakeholders, the artist finds a lease in a studio practice. He is currently exploring tendencies, treatments and stories of varied kinds influenced by anti-humanism, clumsy menace, brutalist architecture, cinema, Tijuana Bible and Indian superhero comics. These tendencies have been pushed across multiple formats such as comics, moving image projects, products, publications, commercial illustrations and paintings.
Amitabh Kumar completed a B.V.A from the Department of Painting at M.S.U. Baroda in 2006. His most recent projects have been in the capacity of a contributing artist, editor and producer. Some of these projects include a silent comic titled Beloved Book, 2020; exhibition works part of Graphic Content, 2019 at Gallery Ark in Vadodara; completing an Artist in Residence program at Hypercultural Passengers in Veddel, Hamburg held in 2019; and executing a mural for Donate a Wall by Asian Paints in 2020. In the past, he has worked with the Sarai Media Lab, and is a founding member of the Pao Collective - an Indian comics ensemble. He is currently occupied with building ecosystems for comic book narratives, while continuing his pedagogic practice across multiple institutional models.
He is currently a faculty member at the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art Design and Technology, Bangalore.