Shibu Arakkal has been rightly termed as an artist with the heart of a painter and the mind of a photographer.

He has developed a unique style of employing multiple, recurring and uniquely blended images and motifs in his work. He has been rightly termed as an artist with the heart of a painter and the mind of a photographer. The artist trained under Sudhir Ramchandran and Rafique Sayed. He was at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam for two years (1996 -97).

His ‘Missing’ series of paintings represented the change that occurred during the time. The use of photography here was even more literal, still adhering to a stubborn involvement with the processes of painting. There was a simulation that resembled the original to a startling degree, but which in fact prompts a set of readings contrary to what was intended, thus displacing the meaning without significantly altering it’s appearance.

In his ‘Off the shadow’ (2001) series, the artist presented a sequence of evocative visuals, soft in their nudging, albeit forceful in their vocabulary. ‘Been there’ (2005) was a collage of images, offered glimpses of truly felt moments in their variegated forms, spaces and colors. ‘Abstract Notions’ (2006-07) poetically captured the real and surreal views of everyday objects, highlighting their lyrical presence.

With his news series ‘Skin’ at Mumbai based Gallery Beyond, the young and talented photo-artist seems to have scaled yet another creative peak. An accompanying essay by Giridhar Khasnis mentions “His images of the skin open up possibilities of multi-layered reading and enjoyment. They provoke thoughts and feelings, ideas and imaginings. Looking at these thought-provoking skinscapes, one realizes that he is trying to do the same thing what Harper Lee extols in her fascinating novel about killing a mockingbird,” the curatorial note states.