Prithvi Dev

2024 | Drawing - Pen and ink on acid-free paper.

Dimensions : 23.4 in x 33.1 in

This 'stream of consciousness' piece is a visual description of Garima's thoughts, memories, and subconscience. She grew up in Rajasthan, lived in the Kumaon mountains, and is now scuba diving, being based in the Andamans. She makes her own thread using a traditional spindle. It is, therefore, a symbolic representation or 'portrait' of her being. It contains both observed sketched scenes as well as elements from imagination, and some with references. Highly intricate and detailed, the drawing is titled 'Meditation I'.

2024 | Drawing - Pen and ink, markers, on acid-free paper.

Dimensions : 20.4 in x 28.1 in

The Golden Eagle is a universal symbol of power, agility, and dynamism, found all over Eurasia, including India. This highly intricate and realistic portrait of the bird was made with only dots - each less than 0.003mm thick - using a technique known as stippling or pointillism. The golden yellow of the eye brings the piece to life.

2024 | Drawing - Pen and ink, alcohol-based markers, on Canson paper

Dimensions : 23.4 in x 33.1 in

This diptych of ‘light drawings’ - Physical Lines of Force and The Ratios of Light - represents a visual stream of consciousness that explores and ties together the phenomenon of light and that of consciousness. They are inextricably linked to create life and meaning in our universe. Peppered with natural elements such as flowers, plants, and birds, as well as physical and mathematical diagrams and symbols such as the Golden Ratio, electromagnetic beams, and Feynman diagrams, these large intricate drawings ultimately celebrate the multifaceted colours, contours, and complexities of life itself.

2024 | Drawing - Oil pastels on acid-free paper

Dimensions - Each piece is either 8.5 in x 11 in, or slightly larger.

A series of quick portraits of friends that stop by the art studio. The focus is less on getting details accurately, rather capturing the essence of the person being sketched - their mood at the moment of drawing. Oil pastels are are a good medium for this objective. The last two drawings were made during a live ghazal at the India Habitat Center, New Delhi.

2023 | Drawing - Oil pastels on acid-free Canson paper

Dimensions - 23.4 in x 33.1 in

A set of common indoor house plants, the Fiddle Leaf Fig and a Ficus Moclame.

2023 | Painting - Acrylic on canvas

A series of impressionistic landscapes and abstract paintings.

2023 | Drawing - Pen and ink, alcohol-based markers, on Canson paper

Dimensions : 23.4 in x 33.1 in

A commissioned drawing of purple sunbirds, both male and female. This technique of art, where one builds a composition (in this case portraits) using only dots, is called stippling or pointillism. When seen from afar it looks like a realistic sketch, but as the piece draws you in one notices thousands of intricate dots, most of which are less than 0.003mm thick. Limiting myself to this method is challenging, it requires time and patience. One progresses carefully as mistakes cannot be undone.

2023 | Dreams chalk paints by Gayatri, Oil Pastels, Acrylic on walls

A series of wall and cabinet paintings made over the summer.

2023 | Pen and ink on acid-free Canson paper

Dimensions : 11.7 in x 16.5 in

A commissioned composition of Emerald Doves made using only small dots, most of which are less than 0.003mm thick.

2023 | Sculpture - Hand built with lazercut polycarbonate sheets, transparent graphic stickers, stainless steel hardware, bulbs

An exploration of modular jitterbug geometries, their resultant motions and structure. It includes an expandable lighting concept i:e; a transparent and modular pyramid prototype.

2022 | Drawing - Pen and ink, alcohol-based markers, on acid-free paper

Dimensions : 8.5 in x 11 in

A higher aim. The root and unravelling of causality. What does it really mean to be enlightened, is it just a momentary state of being? These are the questions I explore through ‘Eyes for the Ethereal’. Drawn in a ‘Stream of Consciousness’ visual style and aesthetic, this triptych grew organically in moments of silence and solitude.

2022 | Pen and ink on acid-free paper

A series of highly intricate drawings depicting the powerful Indian goddess Kali. She is often visually portrayed in a rage. In ‘Kali at the Big Bang’ she is seen inviting the viewer to witness the emergence of light through cosmic background radiation, and the path of our solar system through the galaxy. In “Kali at the Birth of the Universe’ we see Kali creating the unfolding first hand. In ‘Dance of Kali’ she is seen dancing atop the dimensions of light, spacetime, and consciousness in a playful light. All drawn in my intricate and surreal ‘stream of consciousness’ aesthetic.

2022 | Pen and ink, alcohol-based marker, on Canson paper

Observational drawings i:e; hand-studies, a self-portrait of sorts. The pieces evolved organically through the process of sketching. One can see free-flowing lines and geometrical forms that give direction to the hands and add dimension to overall composition.

2021 | Digital, Grasshopper 3D

In a play of motion dynamics, dots trace the trajectories of each face of the Platonic solids as they move from closed to open - contracted to expanded state - in jitterbug motion, as illuminated by Buckminster Fuller, Duncan Stuart, and Joseph Clinton in the 1960's.

There are some interesting symmetries that emerge from this line of visual thinking, and also from creating animations that are inherent in the motion of the kinetic structure itself, as seen in the ghost tetrahedron. The use of transparency allows me to illuminate sacred and fundamental geometries.

2021 | Digital, Grasshopper 3D

An exploration of periodic interference patterns in regular 3 dimensional structures i:e; the Platonic solids. Each geometry consists of only one type of polygon (equilateral triangle, square, or pentagon), which is used to construct the structure, grid, and animation for its kinetic cycle.

2020 | Nature Photography

2020 | Nature Photography

2019 | Sculpture - Hand-constructed using lazercut acrylic sheets, transparent stickers, and stainless steel hardware

Fuller’s iconic jitterbug inspired design scientists such as Joseph Clinton, Duncan Stewart and H.F Verheyen to create and classify a family of expanding-contracting structures, known as ‘dipolygonoids’. These handheld transformers delight through movement. Their regularity, symmetry, and binary alternating interconnectivity are fascinating nested alterations to regular Platonic and Archimedean solids. Furthermore, their rotational translation embeds them in one another. Kinetic art that requires handheld interactions allow for a more personal conceptual experience. ‘Jitterbug Transformations’ is a set of graphic geometrical models that builds on their work with this in mind. I make novel explorations of analog illusion and moving-image techniques on these structures, considering materiality, transparency, and appropriate symbolism. Motion graphics here are inherent in the structures themselves, as opposed to being digital projections. Since dipolygonoids require time to expand and contract, they allow for any concept that takes place through time as ripe ground for visualisation, be it lunar and solar cycles, image sequences, or optical patterns. The viewer’s deliberate action allows for the potential animation to actuate. Using tools of radial and grid lines, dots, regular polygons, and cut out animation, I aim to simulate ideas such as the holographic principle, converging moire, quasicrystal, and dot patterns, and the interconnectedness of atomic through universal scales of reality.

2019 | Nature Photography

2019 | Pen and ink, markers, watercolours, on paper

An assorted series of drawings, sketches, and paintings spanning a few years.

2018 | Drawing - pen and ink, alcohol based markers, on graph paper

Dimensions - 6 in x 9 in

An attempted visual understanding of understanding itself. Language is the structure of interpretation in our brain, and mathematics is its purest form of communication. Evolution, emergence, complexity and constructivism are seen through the lens of Reimann and Ramanujan, as explained by popular math and physics channels online. The act of note taking is a staple of the indian education system and the result here is a artistic look into the weaves of conceptual thinking.

2018 | Drawing - Pen and ink on Post-it and acid-free paper

This series depicts a visual motley of language and equations that mimics an anxiety-fuelled breakdown of reality. Highly intricate, yet messy and haphazard, the drawings were created as an act of note-taking while listening to philosophical lectures and discussions by some of the leading quantum and astrophysicists of our times.

2018 | Fine Art Photography

2018 | Nature Photography

2018 | Nature Photography

2017 | Drawing - Pen and ink, alcohol-based markers, on brown paper

Dimensions - 8.5 in x 5.5 in

Presented is a set of highly intricate drawings depicting personal realisations and experiences. The inspiration for the narrative of this series comes from insights in the co-evolution of human hands and the brain, of dexterity and "intuition pumps", as well as a visual system with a broad range of depth perception. The pieces have many visual influences, and each illustrates a different story or idea.

I mix observed and imagined scenes from immediate vicinities and through self-informed compositional elements directed by hand, eye and mind (in that order). Every element of the composition informs all future mark-making, and is complete when the canvas (and my mind) is visually saturated. This process creates a feedback-loop that allows for a wholistic portrayal of and during the act of drawing.

2017 | Fashion Photography

Photostory of fashion designer Tarun Tahiliani’s 2017 summer collection, Chashme Shahi. Shot at 40 Amrita Shergill Marg, New Delhi.

Models : Aishwarya Singh, Aishwarya Sushmita, Dayana Erappa, Nitin Gupta.

2016 | Drawing, Illustration - Pen and ink, alcohol-based markers, on acid-free paper, hand-made paper, vellum, and canvas

A series of stipplings and illustrations of Indian birds.

2016 | Pen and ink on paper

Dimensions : 11.5 in x 8.5 in

A series of sketches depicting motion-based ideas for handheld sculptural objects and large-scaled installations. Some deal with motors and gears - self-contained moving objects that can depict stories and animations, while others deal with more ambitious thoughts such as the motion of the solar system and possible ways of visually depicting it through kinetic installations.

2015 | Digital - Adobe illustrator, Sculpture - A hand-milled, drilled, and lathed acrylic cone

Dimensions (Sculpture) : 2.5 in x 2.5 in x 4 in

Graphic and 3-dimensional interpretations of light in physical space.

2014 | Sculpture - Acrylic sheets, transparent stickers, stainless steel rivets, and fishing wire

Dimensions - 5 in x 5 in x 5 in

Think outside what box?

This jitterbug is a bolted tensegrity. The term ‘tensegrity’ refers to the tensional integrity or interconnected nature of tension and compression that gives the structure it’s continuous elasticity. Translucent materiality allows for the cube to animate an optical illusion as it expands and contracts. This 4D spiral hologram is created by mirrored lines moving in opposing directions, symbolising a physical ‘event-horizon’. It is inspired by the quantum principle of non-locality i:e; what effects here effects there, from which, everywhere. Strength can be found through rigidity but also by a kinetic ability to sway and adapt.

2013 | Sculpture - Aluminium block, Brass rods.

Dimensions - 6 in x 6 in x 1.5 in

A hand-milled, drilled, lathed, and hydraulic pressed cantilever that reveals itself through rotation and revolution.

2013 | Digital - Adobe illustrator

A pattern inspired by the structure of DNA and the ceiling inlays of the Golden Temple, Amritsar.

2010 | Painting - Gouache on cardstock

A diptych of colourful, intricate self-portraits that speak to each other.

2009 | Drawing, Painting - Pen and ink, watercolour, on paper

A series of watercolour plants (nature studies), as well as landscapes of Rishi Valley, made while in school.

2009 | Drawing, Painting - Acrylic, watercolour, pen and ink, on acid-free paper

A series of Indian birds drawn and painted while in school.