Tanmoy Kayesen shares how his artwork is a trippy portal into his own psychology — and how beholders will never know the full narrative
It’s a rainy day and the crowd at Autumn Leaf Café in Jubilee Hills are cosying up with hot soups, coffees and hot chocolate. As more people come in and search for their seats, they pass the drawings mounted on the walls and some take a second look and understandably so.
Said drawings belong to Tanmoy Kayesen and they’re all so intricate and layered, it often requires quite a bit of time to process what is going on; at first glance one will see shenanigans in a forest and a longer second examination will unravel warped characters interacting in mind-boggling ways.
All ink-on-paper, these black-and-white pieces are worth a perusal if you can withstand the visual chaos.
Sitting down, sporting a shirt just as intricate as his artwork, Tanmoy starts talking about his journey. The 25-year-old graduated from university last year, and is now an architect, adding, “I was thinking it’s not going to make me money if I were to become an artist full time. And I really enjoy my work as an architect so there’s that.”
Tanmoy, whose real name is Tanmoy Naidu KS, explains that it does indeed take a lot of time to complete these works, often 30 hours across a month hours whilst consuming a few ink pens. “I don’t even want to think about how many pens I’ve used since starting out,” he laughs, “but I do know that my intent is to achieve this kind of realism, everything else — like the content you see — is taken care of by my mind. I often am boggled by what I see before me because my mind will tell me ‘draw an arm... now twist that arm... now add another element.’
I like to think of myself as a vehicle for my subconscious. It’s almost like it’s trying to communicate things. I’ve tried to plan out drawings and it doesn’t come together.” But don’t worry, he shares, there have been times he himself has been baffled by the outcome.
But before you try decode Tanmoy’s subconscious, he adds that may not be possible. “It’s a meditative process; there are definitely two parts of me present during the drawing. If my subconscious could directly communicate with my active conscious, I wouldn’t be doing these drawings.”
Diverse markets
Tanmoy’s works have caught the eye of buyers in Europe and the Americas, but not yet locally, as he feels people here are often taken aback by something so graphically vivid and somewhat confusing.
Similar artists like Kerby Rosanes and Eli Helman have also done well largely in the West for these reasons. He comments, “People often see these works as hard to digest and very raw.”
When he started using Instagram, Tanmoy’s followers started to climb and he’s now feeding his warped art to over 3700 followers and regularly linking up with Hyd Insta Meet for networking.
