measure | decipher is Pratap Morey’s first solo exhibition at TARQ. Comprising several new works, measure | decipher seeks to examine the artist’s preoccupation with changing geographies of urban spaces. Pratap has lived and worked in Mumbai for the most part of his life, and has been constantly displaced by the city’s shifting façade. He seeks inspiration from his immediate surroundings, exploring the spatial existence of its residents and the dualism of a colossal urban sprawl where vacant spaces are rapidly transformed into formidable structures.
The artist uses a combination of digital photographic images, archival prints, architectural drawings and engravings in his intricate paper works. Each work delves into the overarching themes of construction, redevelopment and displacement — which are immediate concerns in a contemporary urban environment. The radical proliferation of urban spaces is an urgency that Pratap’s practice abstracts and presents to the viewer in his version of relief sculpture. The structural elevations in his works are restrained deliberations to amplify and reveal movement and metamorphosis as well as create the illusion of voids. He uses the structural nature of his works as a tool to create space, utilizing formal structures like corners and the three-point perspective to draw the viewer into each one of his works.
