Gian Manik

Gian Manik is interested in challenging and subverting the painting genre, although he is happy to remain one of its participants. Turning the medium of painting against itself, he questions the histories of colonialism and, through the process of undermining the foundations of historical painting tradition, become deliberately ambiguous and the accepted subject matter is sabotaged.

Harnessing imitative techniques honed during a childhood spent voraciously copying Old Master paintings, Untitled, 2024, recasts and filters Caravaggio’s second version of Supper at Emmaus, 1606. Rejecting two-dimensional flatness, this mode of display strips the painting of its traditional aura and disrupts the church-like quality assigned to many exhibition spaces.