PROFILE

P. Gnana paints, sculpts and creates conceptual installations, as one of Singapore’s leading artists. He has obtained a highly-captivated audience in the Lion City and internationally, for the aesthetic and conceptual niche that he has created for himself. His paintings are in the collections of the President of the Republic of Singapore and the Singapore Art Museum of the National Heritage Board. Gnana is a recipient of the LASALLE Scholarship of the LASALLE College of the Arts, where he received his formal training in painting. Gnana was selected (in 2005) to undertake a project commissioned by Singapore’s Ascendas to create paintings with an abstract expressionistic motivation for the International Tech Park in Chennai. In 2013, one of Gnana’s larger-than-life sculptures was acquired by National Parks Board to display in Fort Canning Park Singapore.

Gnana’s representation of the cow stems from his childhood in his hometown, that was almost entirely a rural ambience. Gnana played the role of an assistant to his mother in the upkeep of the cows. The cow has become a transcendental metaphor that denotes the unfathomable play between Gnana’s haunting reminiscence of the formative years of his life, and his perception of the temperamental reality of current times. Gnana has ventured into creating three-dimensional representations of his inspiration. The debut collection of Gnana’s charismatic sculptures was officially launched to the public via his eighth solo exhibition, The Eternal Cow: Sculptures and Paintings by P. Gnana, which was presented at the Singapore Philatelic Museum from January 2009 to March 2009.

ARTIST STATEMENT

A significant part of P. Gnana exists in every artwork he creates. In the vast and uncontrollably dynamic world of creativity, he feels both grateful and proud to act as a catalyst of some sort , contributing to the universal human pursuit of enjoying the perfect synthesis of technique, colour, intention, perspective, and, above all, emotion, whether through painting or sculpture.

For Gnana, experimentation serious and sometimes meditative has been one of the key instruments shaping his creative journey over the years. It has allowed him to rejuvenate in a world marked by constant change and fluctuating emotions. In recent years, he has revived his fascination with collage in both his sculptures and paintings. To him, collage is a process-oriented medium, layered with ideas. He recycles materials and merges them with conventional media to explore and express the coexistence between two recurring symbols in his practice.These central figures continue to resonate throughout Gnana’s work, symbolising deeper reflections on existence, harmony, and interconnections.