SHINOD AKKARAPARAMBIL

Shibu Shanmughom

Shinod’s series, 'Point-Blank - 365', a collection of 365 watercolors on Bockingford (7” x 7”), serves as both a rupture and a reimagining of time. By fragmenting and compressing the temporal span into a singular, point-blank experience, these works transcend linear chronology and instead immerse themselves in the cyclical flow of everyday existence. The act of documenting or rather, dismantling the conventional structure of a calendar year transforms into an artistic intervention that trespasses temporal borders and dissolves the rigid separation between past, present, and future.

In this continuous flux, unbridled visuality unfolds organically, mirroring the chaotic yet rhythmic nature of life itself. This visual and conceptual maneuvering generates a dynamic interplay between excess and convergence, between the sensual and the fragmented. The works exist in a state of perpetual motion, resisting static interpretation and embracing an aesthetic of multiplicity.

The dominant figuration of brown and black, infused with the raw essence of mud and soil, anchors the artwork in the primordial. These hues, deeply connected to the earth, spread across the compositions as if engaging in a dialogue with time and space eroding, layering, and reforming in a process of visual sedimentation. The spaces in between these compositions become sites of both movement and violent intimacy, where forms are severed yet bound by an unresolved tension.

A sense of discontinued continuity emerges a paradox in which fragments appear disconnected yet remain inexorably linked through an unseen thread. This abrasion of time and image results in an aesthetic of rupture and isolation; each element stands alone, bearing the mark of its own somatic imprint, yet simultaneously gestures toward an ancient, primordial return. The work’s fluidity resists containment, as overlapping layers engage in an ongoing collision time folding in on itself, digressing, transgressing, and perpetually reinventing its own narrative.

Furthermore, the interplay between kitsch and scrap, elements often dismissed as transient or disposable, acquires a new significance. These materials, inherently folded inward, possess an innate impulse to unfold into plurality echoing the installation-like qualities of the work. They are engulfed in an organic liquidity, a ceaseless movement through time that renders them neither fixed nor ephemeral, but instead perpetually re-emerging. In this way, the aboriginal essence returns, cycling through circular time, defying historical linearity, and reclaiming a space in the present.

Shinod’s 'Point-Blank - 365' is thus more than a series it is an interrogation of time, form, and materiality, where the act of seeing itself is transformed into a visceral, ever-shifting experience.

Shinod painted one picture every day, for 365 days. One day, it was a pregnant woman; on another, it was a butterfly with jet planes shooting out from its extended wings. Artist Shinod Akkaraparambil has put them together as a collage titled ‘Point Blank 365’. Displayed as part of group art show ‘Scaffold’, the collage is done in shades of brown — the colour of earth. 

Shinod feels that it is the earth that nurtures life. The paintings, often abstract, reflect Shinod’s emotions, observations, and conversations over the day. Figures such as hammers, nails, bows, trees, and elephants emerge from the collage. “I’ve sometimes depicted the taste of what I ate a particular day, such as fish or bananas,” he said. 

https://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/the-story-of-life/article6639883.ece 

Of Birth and Rebirth, Shinod's collection of 258 paintings on 10 panels vividly captures “returning to the very soil that gave us form”. Each panel needs careful observation to see those forms that lay coded. It is un unraveling that has to be done by the viewer. He says he deliberately chose the mud-coloured palette to bring forth the intuitive forms. Soil, for Shinod, remains the link between the urban and rustic.