Part of the Tuesday Night MFA Lecture Series at Boston University School of Visual Arts. Sangram Majumdar’s paintings engage deeply with the sensory experience of the world. While rooted in direct observation, his work often veers into the territory of abstraction by utilizing darkness, reflective glare, and refraction, which all serve to dissolve the unity of the subject and disorient the viewer. Majumdar’s recent work is inspired by the Indian Sanskrit epic poem the Ramayana. Figures and repeating motifs such as hands are partially erased and redrawn, producing a central absence that simultaneously alludes to various pictorial conventions ranging from figuration to total abstraction. Born in Kolkata, India, Majumdar has an MFA from Indiana University and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. Recent solo exhibition venues include Barbara Davis Gallery, TX; Asia Society Texas Center, TX; Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, NY; The Landing Gallery, LA; Freight & Volume, NY; Geary Contemporary, NY; and James Cohan Gallery, NY. Awards include a Purchase Award from the 2010 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY, a MacDowell Fellowship, a residency at Yaddo, the 2009-10 Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Space Program Grant, and two Maryland State Art Council Individual Grants in Painting. He is a Professor of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art.