Phaneendra Nath Chaturvedi describes his work as provocative, stark, and brutally honest—large-format drawings and sculptural forms that “unmask” their sitters to reveal what he sees beneath the surface of contemporary appearance.
Born in 1981 in Varanasi, Chaturvedi took both his BFA and MFA in Painting at the University of Lucknow. His meticulously rendered figures—skeletal beings dressed in bright clothing, some plugged into electrical outlets, some bound with barbed wire—stage a pointed critique of artifice and corruption in contemporary life, executed with a draughtsman’s precision that gives the grotesque an unsettling elegance.
In recent years his hybrid beings have extended into three dimensions, developing a sculptural vocabulary that carries the same forensic attention to anatomy and ornament into physical space.
His work has been exhibited at the National Academy of Art, Mumbai, the Inter-State Exhibition, Shimla, the AIFACS Annual Show, New Delhi, the 10th Harmony Show, Mumbai, and Hybrid Trend at the Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul Arts Center, South Korea. His honours include the AIFACS Award (2004), the Vishisht Pratibha Samman of the University of Lucknow (2005), the All India Award of the Ministry of Culture (2006), and an award at the 20th All India Art Exhibition, Nagpur.