This is a catalogue of the exhibition of contemporary fine art photography by Unni Krishnan Pulikkal at Treptow-Köpenick, Berlin, Germany. June 18 – July 8, 2011. ‘Two in One’ showcases a collection of 21 photographic diptychs. Each diptych is one work of art formed by two images. Each image in a diptych has independent meaning and relevance. They team together to express a unique concept or idea.

“Unni Pulikkal’s photographs feature an international outlook while being innately Indian. Indian motifs, architecture and nature flow beneath the universal language that he uses to construct his concepts. The works break the boundaries between photography and painting. These are paintings made with photographs. And, these are photographs painted with light” (Wolfgang Dürr, the Director of Schmetterlingshorst Gallery)

“Unni’s photographs are wet, succulent, plump, sensual:  you can consume them as a feast, or follow them with naked feet till they turn around and look you in the eye. The innate symbiosis of life and things of the universe, and the willingness with which we desire to accept these dualities—the multiple in the singular, the religious in the concrete, the sky in the earth—make Unni’s lens a comfortable, homely and familiar one. The bridge of these contradictions is love, of course, the passionate unity of the elemental. Nature and architecture, the vertical and the horizontal, the colorful and the colorless, the microcosmos and the macrocosmos, the process and the product, rationality and emotion corrugate, correspond, and contemplate. In any game of two is a poem, a construction of a magically real landscape.” (Himali Singh Soin, Art writer and poet, who worked with National Geographic, now settled in Delhi)

The exhibition showcases 21 works for 21 days and specifically treats the idea of “2 in 1”, wherein two images unite to form one work of art; two discrete concepts unite to describe a greater concept of art or life at large.

The show, organized by the Bezirkssportbund and Scmetterlingshorst Gallery, is supported by the Department of Culture, Treptow-Köpenick, Berlin.
Download Exhibition Catalogue (PDF 4.3 MB)