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Through the medium of drawings, sculptural installations and video art, Suman Kabiraj uses satire to enable comparison, understanding and insight and holds up the flaws in our institutions, our leaders, our nations, our species and, indeed, ourselves. The works combine history, politics and current events with levity and witty irreverence. Humour, a relatively rare presence in contemporary art, is treated with considerable suspicion by most viewers and critics but Kabiraj’s treatment of his subject is perceptive as well as funny. In these works, he is able to explore the earthy and quotidian as a reproach to the lofty and a negation of the ideal. He is able to perceive incongruous relationships and express them in a pointed manner.

Kabiraj has no desire to save the world or indeed to change it. His work is subversive and a comment on the human condition itself offering the viewer a behind-the-scenes look at the heroic and the rational. Most of his subjects are familiar but re contextualized. In what they encompass or allude to, these works transcend the merely comically grotesque or the quest for objectivity. They are a relentless scrutiny of the world ranging from scathing social commentary to opulent ornamental-ism. On all scores, though, the artistic attention is both contemplative as well as confrontational.