In the Spaces Between: Karunasiri Wijesinghe’s අතර තුර | Interstices
By Thaliba Cader
For one of Sri Lanka's most distinctive contemporary painters, the forest is not simply a collection of trunks, branches and tangled vines. It is a complex visual language where forms dissolve into one another, where roots begin to resemble figures, branches carry the gestures of living bodies, and abstraction quietly reveals itself without ever abandoning the natural world.
This philosophy lies at the heart of අතර තුර | Interstices, Wijesinghe's latest solo exhibition, opening this August. The exhibition continues a lifelong investigation into the subtle architectures of nature, presenting works that are less concerned with depicting landscapes than with uncovering the hidden structures that exist beneath their apparent disorder.
Wijesinghe belongs to a generation of Sri Lankan artists who have consistently challenged conventional ways of seeing landscape. While many painters have approached nature as scenery or symbolism, his practice has remained rooted in sustained observation. The forests he paints are not imagined places. They are environments studied over decades, where repeated encounters have revealed rhythms that escape immediate perception.
His paintings emerge from this prolonged act of looking.
The dense networks of roots, branches and creeping vines become visual systems that resist straightforward representation. At first glance they appear organic and familiar. With time, however, unexpected presences begin to surface. Human silhouettes seem to emerge from bark. Animal forms linger within clusters of branches. Movement appears where there was once stillness. The landscape gradually shifts from description to suggestion.
For Wijesinghe, this transformation is neither illusion nor invention.
"When the intricate forms of trees and vines intertwine, an unexpected abstraction emerges, a stillness within which the true essence of nature reveals itself," he explains. "Abstraction is not something added to nature. It is already dwelling within it."
That distinction is significant. Rather than imposing abstract principles upon the landscape, Wijesinghe argues that abstraction already exists within natural structures. His role as an artist is one of discovery rather than construction, isolating moments that might otherwise remain unnoticed and allowing them to resonate through paint.
The exhibition's title, Interstices, offers an important key to this way of seeing. An interstice is a narrow space between forms, an overlooked interval where separate elements meet. It is precisely within these spaces that Wijesinghe locates meaning. The paintings ask viewers to look beyond dominant forms and pay attention to relationships, transitions and fragments that usually disappear into the whole.
This approach lends the work a contemplative quality. The compositions are dense but never chaotic. Complexity is carefully distilled into rhythmic arrangements of line, texture and shadow, creating images that reward sustained viewing rather than immediate recognition. They unfold gradually, revealing themselves through patience rather than spectacle.
Born in Makadura in 1957, Wijesinghe graduated from the Institute of Aesthetic Studies at the University of Kelaniya with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1982. Alongside his practice, he has contributed significantly to arts education, serving as a visiting lecturer at the Vibhavi Academy of Fine Arts and the University of the Visual and Performing Arts in Colombo. He continues to live and work in Colombo.
Seen together, the works in අතර තුර | Interstices feel less like a conclusion than another chapter in an artistic inquiry that has unfolded across four decades. They invite viewers to reconsider the familiar landscape not as a place of certainty but as one of quiet ambiguity, where every branch, root and tangled vine contains possibilities that only reveal themselves to those willing to look a little longer.
අතර තුර | Interstices opens with a preview on Thursday, August 13, from 6.00 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. The exhibition will be on view from August 14 to September 5, Monday through Saturday, between 10.00 a.m. and 6.30 p.m.
