Gihan Karunaratne to exhibit at third Colombo Art Biennale

Friday, 3 January 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Accomplished architect artist and an academic by profession, Gihan Karunaratne will participate at the 3rd Colombo Art Biennale 2014 scheduled to be held in Colombo from 31 January to 9 February 2014. Gihan’s theme for the Biennale will be based on Ethereal Mapping and will include his works from maps, diagrams to a short animated film portraying the protesters outside St Paul’s cathedral, throwing light on police kettling techniques, questioning the use of social media and smart phone tracking techniques and infrastructure maps.

Drawn with a combination of observation, investigation and high-tech data analysis, Ethereal maps identify movement, socio-economic patterns, and current local and global political conditions. By exposing these alternative realities, Gihan’s maps lay them open to interrogation. Roads and rivers have been the basis for maps of the last century and while Google maps have added businesses to every road in Britain, only a few publicly accessible maps chart the details and social moments that are seen around us. Architects, whose process is defined by the view from plans, sections and elevations bound to physical measurements, do not always have the opportunity to explore beyond the tight boundaries of standard presentation techniques. Gihan’s ethereal maps show different graphic techniques for recording and analysing city data as well as exploring viewpoints from many different social backgrounds. They also investigate alternative ways of understanding current local and global issues through a series of mapped events. This is an ambitious portrayal of complex networks across a multitude of disciplines, from urban telecommunication/infrastructure to current socio political affairs. Cartographic data is rigorously researched, as well as the intersections of the relatively nascent yet increasingly powerful techno-cultural phenomena, network science and information visualisation which are continually in a state of flux. Gihan Karunaratne completed a Master Degree in Architecture at the prestigious Royal College of Art, London in summer 2002, and is a Chartered registered architect at Royal Institute of British Architect (RIBA). He has been an academic lecturer in both Britain and Sri Lanka and has exhibited at the Rotterdam Architecture Biennale in 2009 and four times at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. In 1999, Gihan won The Bovis and Architect Journal award for architecture and was made a Fellow of Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) for Architecture, Design and Education in 2012. Uniqueness of Gihan’s art The uniqueness of Gihan’s art investigates how we analyse our world through mapping, both of the actual world and of alternative realities, by drawing on a combination of observation, investigation and high-tech data analysis, which identify movement, socio-economic patterns, and local political conditions. The maps are a compilation of hidden data not bound to a fixed time, scale or grid, but which evoke emotional exploration into the ethereal world. For the Colombo Art Biennale 2014, Gihan is exhibiting a series of maps, diagrams and a short animated film mapping, portraying the protesters outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, throwing light on police kettling techniques, questioning the use of social media, smartphone tracking techniques and the banality of infrastructure maps. Gihan also runs his own design and architecture company – GKAD Consultant Ltd. – providing creative and sustainable design solutions for the built environment specialising in high-end/luxury residential and commercial designs. His philosophy lies in the emotional and physical qualities of architecture and design. This belief has developed out of a fascination for materials, backed up with an involvement in academic and office based research. The designs focus on a strong ethical and values-based agenda, with a desire to adapt to the specific physical context and clients’ needs for sustainable vernacular yet high end living.