An artist working across painting, installation, video, and community-based projects, Shreyas Karle is the co-director of CONA and the KATCONA Design Cell along with his partner, Hemali Bhuta. Karle received his Diploma in Painting from LS Raheja School of Art in 2002 and his Post-Diploma from Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Baroda (Now Vadodara) in 2008.

Karle’s work stretches across a wide range of mediums such as video, installation, collage and community engagement, where he inquires into the conventions of art and life. In Domestic Animals (2020), for instance, he brings in objects from his domestic space, and through their displacement and decontextualisation, questions the nature of objecthood as well as what qualifies as art. In Fountain, commissioned for the first Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2012, a small crack in a cemented water fountain makes the whole structure obsolete, as water keeps trickling out of it. His installations bring in references from historical and banal moments, often taking the form of quasi-museological. In his 2019 show Exit Through the Entrance at Grey Noise, for instance, all the works to be exhibited were designed so that they could be shipped in a single crate and the display laid open the crate, to visualise the process and its logistics.

Karle’s work has been exhibited at Grey Noise (Dubai, UAE), Project 88 (Mumbai, India), The Loft (Mumbai, India), National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA, Mumbai, India) as well as in Tihar Jail, New Delhi and the hills of Partapur, Rajasthan. He has been commissioned for the Aichi Triennale, Japan in 2016 and Changwon Biennial, South Korea in 2014. He has participated in Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Venice Biennial and Prague Biennale. He has lectured as visiting faculty at Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan in 2017 and for Kyoto University of Art and Design Graduate School in 2018. He has been awarded residencies at Gasworks (London, UK) in 2013, Rote Fabrik (Zurich, Switzerland) in 2012, and Montalvo Arts Center (California, USA) in 2010. He has been the recipient of the FICA Emerging Artist award in 2009, Bodhi award in 2008 and the Nasreen Mohamedi scholarship from Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU, Baroda in 2005.

At the time of writing, Karle lives and works in Mumbai.