Noah's Ark

In one of the startling compressions of time and register for which Burman's art is Distinguished, the artist-persona paints Noah's Ark, loaded with its human and Animal cargo of survivors, even as that fabled vessel sails towards him, its story Unfolding on the wall behind him, because the wall has become a cinema screen. Or is it the screen of mythic memory, brought vividly to contemporary being, made More real than the real under pressure from the imagination, Will the studio be Inundated by the Flood on which the Ark still rides, Or has the Ark stopped in Mid-passage, stilled by the will and desire of the artist.

- Ranjit Hoskote