Puja Chodha is a visual artist based in New York NY. She graduated with a Masters in Studio Art from Steinhardt, New York University. She presently works at Pratt Institute in the School of Design.
Born and raised in Bangalore- India, her personal works explore and investigate the nature of human visual perception and self-transformation through the creative process.
I approach my work as a form of meditation. I am inspired by the poetic and expressionist works of Albert Pinkham Ryder, Paul Klee and Hilma Af Klint- who at their very core were seeking an essence of their being. Alberto Burri's textural works and Mark Rothko’s sublime and visceral color field paintings that have references in abstraction intrigue and interest me.
My process involves making pictures indecipherable to me in my camera, distorting found images and objects on a scanner bed or sampling and remixing encaustic paintings, sculpture and photographs. The interplay of light and shadow, color, shapes and texture is always on my mind. I turn things out of focus, blur, smudge, layer, sample and composite images that I am intuitively drawn to. The process of deconstructing then re-constructing (physically and digitally), to create chaos and then order, facilitates a dialogue with the work and brings me to a place of truth and harmony. Disparate elements come together, forms emerge and lines seem to transform themselves. What is, becomes what it was not. It is this moment that I’m after, the elusive, unexpected moment of awe inspiring visions and a strange sort of magic... I attempt to make visible images that surface from my subconscious imagination, to extract and express untold stories that ultimately reveal themselves.
What remains is a testimony of an experience for viewers to tap into and discover for themselves the potency of the present moment.
