About his work, Dolly Lakkad Tekade, Says “To gaze at blank, white paper and observe curvilinear patterns encapsulated by it, can be stirring. This is a feeling you cannot escape when looking at Sachin Tekade’s works which use paper as medium. Inspired by contemporary minimal architecture, Sachin’s work is a poetic geometry of patterns. Expanse of whiteness punctuated with fine lines result in a marvelous play of shadows and contours, is emblematic of his work.” The artist uses various carving and folding methods in conjunction with the surface of paper. In Sachin’s deft hands, the paper, devoid of color and subject, treats the materializing forms as its own appendages.

On the subject matter of his art, the artist is quick to mention that he explores the process rather than thought ideas. His practice is a way of realizing an exquisite skill with paper. He explores various possibilities and outcomes that would ultimately bring him peace. “My art is like innocent and selfless love which can only take me to enlightenment and peace,” He says Practicing his singular paper art is a process identical to meditation for Sachin. And this, one can certainly believe when one recollects his earlier series like Poetics of Space (2014, at THE LOFT at Lower Parel).

The series exhibited here is consciously titled Absence as the artist reconfirms his way of exploring the textural qualities of paper over socio-political statements or narrative themes art is capable of portraying. He says that he prefers not to have any words for his work.

The essential question for an artist is: Why s/he resorts to her/his form of art and what s/he want to tell her/his audience? Or a step further. Does s/he need an audience?! It is an introspective struggle in Sachin’s mind as he tries to clarify that many a times his art is not talking about anything specifically; it is just pure visual pleasure. Although his art displays intriguing practice that can stun the viewer, it denies the learned audience the pleasure of decoding a subtext. Instead, Sachin’s art entails the curious involvement of the audience to try and find out the methods resorted to create a particular piece of paper art. This is also corroborated by the artist when he says that he finds the onlookers involved in process of ‘how’ the art was created rather than ‘why’ it was created.

Practicing art and patience for Sachin is simultaneous. He says that he observes immense discipline to create the intricacy and efficiency in his works of art. It is extremely vital for him to maintain the achromacity of his art and therefore the efficiency matters. ‘The Absence’ in the title refers to the lack of colors and the nonexistent narrative. Sachin believes in the purity of his medium and hence abstains from use of colors. In the context of the ‘absence’, it is interesting to invoke the spiritual Indian text of Bhagwad Gita that instructs one to lose what one has, to become a nonentity and achieve singularity with the higher self.

Sachin’s use of minimalism seems to allude to this spiritual process of de-saturating one’s life and these ideas, somehow, paradoxically endow his art with a sophisticated simplicity.