Maddilety explores the continuous transformation of matter, ideas, and perception, connecting everyday materials with the cyclical logic of the universe.
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suresh babu maddilety
Hyderabad, India
Biography
Suresh Babu Maddilety (b.1971, India) is a Hyderabad-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, digital collage, video, photography, sound, text, and found materials. His work explores matter in continuous transformation, treating substances such as municipal water, dust, soil, pigments, and digital pixels as living processes rather than fixed materials. Maddilety’s practice brings together scientific cosmology, perceptual experience, and material behaviour, often drawing from Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC) to reflect how microscopic events echo larger cosmic cycles. He extends this framework beyond matter itself, proposing that ideas, intuitions, and perceptual states may also transform across cycles of time and imagination.
Across his practice, he examines how objects, images, and elements shift state, forming dynamic surfaces and structures that pulse, dissolve, fracture, or reassemble. His works explore the fluid boundaries between the man-made and the natural, the tangible and the immaterial, the everyday and the cosmic. Through these transformations, he investigates how instability and transition shape our perception of time, memory, thought, and existence.
Internationally recognized, Maddilety has been a finalist in several major global art awards, including Ars Electronica (2021), the ArtSlant Prize (2018), and the Arte Laguna Prize (2015), alongside exhibitions and screenings in India and abroad. He earned his BFA and MFA in Hyderabad (1998), where he remains based. Maddilety continues to develop experimental visual languages that connect material transitions, perceptual shifts, and cosmological thinking within a contemporary art framework.
Artist Statement
I am a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores matter, perception, and thought in continuous transformation. Working across painting, digital collage, video, photography, sound, and found materials, I treat every substance—from municipal water, dust, soil, and pigments to digital pixels and everyday detritus—as a living process rather than a fixed material. My work begins where objects, images, and ideas shift state, revealing the invisible transitions that shape our perception of time and the world around us.
A central influence in my practice is Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC), a theory proposing that the universe unfolds through infinite cycles of dissolution and rebirth. I extend this idea not only to matter but also to ideas and perceptual states, considering how they too dissolve and re-form across experiential cycles. I bring this cosmological idea into the realm of daily experience by examining how a drop of water, a flicker of light, a fragment of debris, or a single pixel already carries within it the logic of cosmic cycles. In my practice, the microscopic and the cosmic mirror one another through patterns of collapse, re-formation, and continual motion.
Visually, my works form dynamic surfaces—layers that pulse, blur, fracture, or reassemble. Paintings allow man-made objects to evolve into hybrid forms; digital collages reconstruct galaxies from fragmented imagery; and video works such as SociaLiquids reveal unstable materials generating new substances. These shifting structures invite viewers to experience instability not as destruction, but as the natural rhythm through which matter—and imagination—persist.
My intention is to collapse conventional scales and challenge the assumption of permanence. Each work functions as an experiment: a rehearsal for change. I want viewers to sense the underlying continuity that links the dust beneath our feet, the thoughts that pass through the mind, and the evolving cycles of the universe—opening space to contemplate transformation as the fundamental condition of existence across both matter and consciousness.
Artwork Descriptions
1. Social Liquids
2. Universe Constructivism
3. Microscopicism
4. Pronouncism
5. Found the Space for Art
6. Man-made objective art
1. Social Liquids
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artist: Suresh Babu Maddilety, title: social liquid 01, medium: video, year: 2014.
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artist: Suresh Babu Maddilety, title: socail liquid 2, medium: video, year:2022.
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artist: Suresh Babu Maddilety, title: social liquid 3, medium: video, year: 2015.
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artist: Suresh Babu Maddilety, title: icmfspbpce, medium: video, year:2022.
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artist: Suresh Babu Maddilety, title: mjphcopcftcb, medium;video, year:2017.
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artist: Suresh Babu Maddilety, title: 6edsncfetgfsmpmh, medium: video, year:2019.
Social Liquids is an ongoing video series (2015–2025) that examines how matter reorganizes itself when diverse substances meet. Using municipal water, organic residues, household liquids, powders, and pigments, each work captures spontaneous reactions that generate new hybrid states. The videos function as focused observations of material behaviour—how liquids merge, resist, dissolve, or re-form through simple acts of mixing.
The series carries a gentle influence from scientific observation and early, everyday exposure to practical material mixing, which shaped my intuitive approach to experimentation. These small reactions subtly reflect the broader cosmological ideas within my practice, particularly the cycles of transition described in Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC), where matter continually shifts between states.
By engaging materials that are often overlooked or unstable, Social Liquids challenges assumptions about value and artistic legitimacy. Rather than presenting a final outcome, the videos frame transformation itself as the artwork—ephemeral processes that invite viewers to witness instability not as contamination, but as the fundamental rhythm through which matter persists.
2. Universe Constructivism
Universe Constructivism transforms NASA galaxy photographs into new visual narratives through digital collage. Using Adobe Photoshop, Maddilety works with individual celestial fragments—each functioning as a discrete visual unit—to construct imagined terrains, such as the house in Universe Constructivism 01 or the mountain-and-lake formation in Universe Constructivism 02. Galaxies, nebulae, and stellar textures become the compositional elements from which alternative cosmic worlds are built.
Inspired by the 1960s Land Art Movement, where artists shaped physical landscapes using earth and stone, Maddilety reinterprets that impulse in a digital realm. Instead of altering land, he arranges astronomical imagery to create speculative cosmic architectures, proposing the possibility of a future “Galaxy Art Movement,” where cosmic data becomes an artistic medium.
The works evoke a sense of cosmic vastness and expanded temporality, opening space for imagined aeons as well as new scientific and artistic possibilities. Through the meticulous gathering and layering of galaxy fragments, Universe Constructivism reveals how celestial material can be reconfigured into evolving visual worlds—inviting viewers to encounter the universe as a constructed, ever-transforming terrain.
3. Microscopicism
Microscopicism is a research-based conceptual project that began with the question of how a traditional still-life study could be imagined inside the microscopic world of an actual atom. By shifting still-life from visible objects to the unseen structures that constitute matter, the project challenges conventional links between reality, scale, and tangibility.
Microscopicism isolates individual microscopic units—cell fragments, molecular diagrams, atomic models—and treats them as discrete visual elements. When arranged together, these units form expanded conceptual systems, suggesting how the smallest structures of matter can generate visual compositions.
While scientists examine these structures through measurement and strict methodology, Maddilety approaches them visually, translating microscopic forms into images that can be perceived without instruments. The project explores how invisible processes—such as photosynthesis, cell cycles, or atomic interactions—might be rendered accessible as artistic phenomena.
Ultimately, Microscopicism speculates on a future where artists may work directly with atomic-scale matter and where the microscopic world becomes a site for artistic imagination. It invites viewers to reconsider how the smallest units of existence shape perception, materiality, and the evolving possibilities of art.
4. Pronouncism
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title: Pronouncism 01- 01 medium: video year; 2023
Pronouncism is a video work that combines audio, text, and screen-capture footage to explore how language produces meaning. In the piece, Maddilety types random combinations of letters from the Telugu alphabet—his mother tongue—into a translation application. The software’s AI-generated voice then pronounces these invented, non-existent words, producing sounds that are linguistically absurd yet acoustically coherent.
Drawing from the lineage of text art, which traditionally relies on meaningful or legible language, Maddilety disrupts that expectation by using words with no semantic function at all. Instead of meaning, he foregrounds pronunciation itself as an artistic material. Pronouncism asks why text-based art privileges existing, meaningful words while ignoring abstract, non-semantic forms that language also contains.
Through this experiment, the work opens a space between sound and sense—revealing how language can operate as pure material, independent of fixed meaning, grammar, or linguistic logic.
5. Found the Space for Art
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artist: Suresh Babu Maddilety, title: art in the moon, Medium: video, Year: 2024.
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artist: Suresh babu maddilety, title: art in the sun, medium:video, year:2024
Found the Space for Art is a digital video series in which Maddilety creates drawings inside unconventional, “found” spaces such as rocks, mountains, the human body, the Sun, and the Moon. Using Windows 3D software and live screen-capture recording, he draws directly onto these forms, turning the videos into records of both action and transformation.
In works like Art in the Moon and Art in the Sun, celestial bodies function as alternative canvases. Maddilety is less interested in the finished drawing than in discovering new sites for art—places not traditionally seen as surfaces yet full of imaginative potential. These videos explore how artistic intervention can inhabit unexpected matter and expand where visual expression can occur.
Inspired by the idea of an “empty canvas” beyond the studio, Maddilety approaches natural and cosmic environments much like graffiti artists seeking unorthodox surfaces. This search extends into speculative, futuristic terrains, reflecting his broader interest in how perception and imagination transform across cycles of time and consciousness. Found the Space for Art invites viewers to reconsider what a surface is and how the universe itself may become a site of creative possibility
6. Man-made objective art
wine bottle
size: 24x24 inches-medium: acrylic colors year: 2023.___________ In the Man-made Objective Art universe, the wine bottle acts like an atom—its wine drops falling like atomic particles. These wine drops spark the growth of a grape tree without connection, in contrast to our world where trees grow from seeds. Each wine drop serves as an independent catalyst for transformation, which is why the wine bottle is depicted in isolation.
from cement
size: 24x24 inches-medium: acrylic colors year: 2022_____________In this concept, cement is reversed as the origin of the tree. The tree behaves like cement, solid and structured, defying natural processes. This reimagining reflects the idea that trees, traditionally born from soil, can instead emerge from an unnatural, solid foundation. The tree's behavior mirrors the rigidity of cement, blending the organic and the constructed in a continuous cycle of transformation.
chair
size: 24x24 inches-medium: acrylic colors year: 2024_______________ In this conceptual universe, the color of the tree originates from the chair, with the trees' coloration behaving like the chair itself. However, since this transformation takes place without direct connection, the trees are not visible. This is why the chair is depicted in isolation, representing the source of the trees' color.
from pollution
size: 20x20inches-medium: acrylic colors year: 2023___________In this concept, pollution is reversed as the origin of the flower. Just as a flower grows from the earth, the flower emerges from the byproducts of pollution. This idea transforms the concept of environmental decay into one of rebirth and creation. By reversing natural processes, pollution becomes the seed from which new life, symbolized by the flower, originates.
from makeup
size:25x25inches-medium:acrylic colors yaer:2023____________In the "Man-made Objective Art" concept, makeup is reversed as the origin of the woman. Just as a seed gives birth to a tree, makeup acts as the starting point, from which the woman emerges. This concept mirrors the idea of a unicellular organism giving rise to a complex form of life. By reversing natural processes, makeup becomes the fundamental element.
from the cable
size:20x20 inches medium: acrylic colors year: 2024___________In this concept, the cable is reversed as the origin of birds, even the sky itself. From the cable, birds emerge, shaping the sky around them. The birds' forms and expressions echo the structure of the cable, blending the artificial with the natural. By reversing natural processes, the cable becomes the source from which life and its surroundings take flight.
bullock cart
size: 24x24 inches-medium: acrylic colors year: 2023_________In this conceptual reversal, the cow originates from the cart. The cow adopts cart-like qualities, and even its surroundings echo the character of the cart.
flower vase
size: 28x24 inches-medium: acrylic colors year: 2024_________From the flower vase, plants originate. From the tap, water emerges. From the boat, trees, mountains, and even the sun take form. The surrounding environment behaves like a fusion of various man-made objects. This is a reverse interplay, where creation follows an inverted process.
new suns
size: 24x24 inches-medium: acrylic colors year: 2024____________From a matchstick, suns originate—along with plants and trees. The surroundings take on the essence of a matchstick, though they remain unseen, existing only in the imagination. Here, multiple suns emerge, reversing the natural order and reshaping perception.
from the camara
size:24x24inches-medium: acrylic-colors year:2024__________________In this concept, the camera is reversed as the origin of the landscape. From the lens, mountains, trees, and ponds emerge, creating a vivid natural scene. Just as a camera captures the world, it is reimagined as the source of nature itself. By reversing natural processes, the camera becomes the starting point from which landscapes are formed.
replace with new mountains
size:25x25 medima: acrylic-colors-year:2025_____________If something breaks, we replace it with something new. Similarly, I removed the old mountains and replaced them with new ones, even creating a new atmosphere by removing the old one.
table
size:22x22 medium:acrylic colors year:2024____________In this concept, the table is reversed as the origin of tree trunks, even the earth itself. From the surface of the table, tree trunks rise and the earth is formed, symbolizing a reimagined natural order. Just as a table is a man-made object, it becomes the foundation for the growth of nature. By reversing natural processes, the table becomes the seed from which the natural world emerges.
to be assembled
siz: 25x25inches medium: acrylic colors year:2025___________In our world, making a table involves separately creating and assembling its parts. In the "Man-made objective art" universe, the table is the fundamental unit, and trees grow metaphorically from it, without the natural order of stems, branches, and leaves. Here, creating a real tree means assembling parts in a nonlinear fashion, like constructing a table.
umbarilla
size"25x25inches-medim: acrylic colors year:2024________________In the "Man-made objective art" universe, the umbrella fundamental unit generates clouds and rain, unlike in our world, where atmospheric changes drive these phenomena. Here, the umbrella acts like atoms, forming clouds and rain without direct interaction, which is why it’s depicted in isolation.
walls
size:20x20inches medium:acrylic colors year:2023___________Everything originates from compound walls—trees, flowers, earth, air, and even the atmosphere. The atmosphere itself takes on the form and essence of compound walls, blurring the line between the natural and the constructed.
electric-poles
size:25x25 medium:acrylic colors year:2025______________In this concept, electric poles are reversed as the origin of the entire environment. From the poles emerge land, mountains, water, plants, trees, flowers, air, and even the sky, forming the whole atmosphere. The environment itself behaves like electric poles, though it remains unseen, existing only in the imagination. By reversing natural processes, the poles become the source from which all elements of life and nature originate, reshaping perception and creation.
the sun is landing
size: 24x24 inches-medium: acrylic colors year: 2023____________The sun serves as a metaphor for an airplane. Here, the sun originates from an airplane and takes on its behavior—moving, flying, and landing. Even the surroundings adopt the qualities of an airplane, with the air itself moving like an aircraft. However, these transformations remain unseen, existing only in the realm of imagination, evoking a metaphysical experience.
bus
medium:Acrylic on Canvas size:25x25inc year:2025____________From the bus’s windows, the sky and trees originate, extending even to the surroundings. The isolated bus also gives birth to humans from its seats, yet this occurs without direct connection—beyond the painting itself. Here, the painting is not confined within the frame; it expands into universal space, evoking a metaphysical experience.
objective rain
size: 25x25 inches-medium: acrylic colors year: 2025___________Rain originates from an umbrella, which exists beyond the painting in its original horizontal position. The rain itself also falls horizontally. The surroundings take on the qualities of an umbrella, yet this transformation is a metaphysical experience, extending beyond the visible.
wine bottle and glass
medium:Acrylic on Canvas size:20x19inc year:2025___________In this concept, the wine bottle and glass function like atoms, while the wine itself represents the electron. Unlike in traditional atomic structures where electrons orbit the proton, here the roles are reversed—the proton moves around the electrons. This inversion highlights a unique set of physical laws, reimagining fundamental interactions in a new reality.
ponds
medium:Acrylic on Canvas size: 20x19inc year:2024______________In this concept, the boat generates ponds, but the ponds resemble the materials of the boat itself. The surroundings adopt the qualities of a boat, yet this transformation exists beyond the visible realm. It is a metaphysical experience, where form and function reverse, challenging perceptions of origin and materiality.
no one created village
medium: Acrylic on Canvas size: 20x19inc year: 2025_____________In the "Man-made Objective Art" universe, the village takes the place of atoms as the fundamental unit. Unlike our world, where atoms form everything and even exist independently, this village was not created but emerged on its own.
boat river
size: 20x20 inches-medium: acrylic colors year: 2023_____________In this concept, the boat generates the river, yet the river takes on the form of the boat. The boat exists both within and beyond the painting, extending into an imagined space. This reversal of origin transforms the river into a metaphysical extension of the boat itself.
from brick
size: 24x24 inches-medium: acrylic colors year: 2022_____________A brick generates a tree, with its trunk shaped like a brick wall. The surroundings absorb the essence of the brick, yet this transformation remains unseen, existing as a metaphysical experience beyond the painting.
creating sky
size: 22x22 inches-medium: acrylic colors year: 2022_______________A ladder generates the sky and space, but there is no land or stars, as it embodies the abstract behavior of the ladder. This unique space, unlike our natural world, is a metaphysical experience.
creating canvas world
size: 24x24 inches-medium: acrylic colors year: 2021____________The canvas painting generates land, sky, water, and atmosphere, shaping reality rather than depicting it. Surroundings take on the essence of the painted forms, extending into a metaphysical experience where creation and perception merge.
Man-made Objective Art is a series of 30 bright, square-format paintings created between 2019 and 2025. Drawing from materialist philosophy—where matter is primary—Maddilety reimagines creation by treating man-made objects as the fundamental units of his visual universe. If materialism begins with atoms, he asks: What if human-made objects served as those atoms?
Reversing natural processes, everyday items become generative seeds: tables grow into trees, wine drops turn into vines, and familiar objects shift into hybrid natural forms. These works question identity and function—if a wine glass no longer holds wine, is it still a wine glass?
His process starts with a single man-made object, around which he layers natural forms, producing compositions that unfold through continuous transformation. Bright acrylic colours, single-angle perspectives, and subtle internal shifts give the paintings a metaphysical quality.
For Maddilety, the works act as drafts—speculative proposals for how matter and form might transform in the future, whether through emerging technologies or through nature’s own evolution.
CV
SURESH BABU MADDILETY
Born 1971, Medukurthi, Andhra Pradesh, India.
Lives and works in Hyderabad.
https://artsted.com/profile/portfolio
EDUCATION:
Graduation: 1986-1992; B.F.A J.N.T.U. College of fine arts, Hyderabad.
Post-Graduation: 1996-1998; M.F.A University of Hyderabad.
FINALIST:
Captive Portal, Kiosque de l’In-visible, Copenhagen, 2025, Denmark.
RevArt Global, 404://ART, California, 2025, US.
NEULAND Gallery video screening in Bochum, 2024-Germany.
U.S. Consulate General Hyderabad on India-US Space Cooperation contest 2024
Special prize winner, Mellow Art Award 2021
For video work in IAR International Artist Residency 2020- Napoli (Italy).
For installation work in YICCA Art contest 2017/2018 – Milan (Italy).
1st 2018 Art Slant Prize juried winner, USA.
For installation work in YICCA Art contest 2017- Rome (Italy).
For installation work in Art Laguna Prize 2015- Venice (Italy).
For installation work in Premio Combat Prize2015- Livorno (Italy).
SELECTED FOR ART FESTIVALS:
Goes:Art, On Screen festival 2024, Vienna, Austria.
The Ars Electronica Festival 2021, Austria.
Festival DeSidera 2021, Italy.
ARTISTS SELECTION FIRST PHASE:
Air Land 3.0 INSIDE LAND organized by the Quasi Quadro association, 2020, Turin (Italy).
AWARDS:
47th All India Art exhibition by the Hyderabad art society, 1988.
ONE MAN SHOW:
On 13th Sep 1998, at C.I.E.F.L, Hyderabad.
GROUP SHOWS:
Captive Portal, Kiosque de l’In-visible, Copenhagen, 2025, Denmark.
RevArt Global, 404://ART, California, 2025, US.
The ArtDocuMentorProject, READING ROOM, 2025, India.
The Dalí’s Surprisingly Surreal Photo Contest Online Exhibit 2025, The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, FL, US.
MOTILE ART the 4th International Online Art Exhibition 2024, India.
CISTA ARTS online group show Metamorphosis: Exploring Transformation Through Art, online group show 2024, London.
ICAC art gallery group show, 2022, Ahmedabad, India.
Round Lemon international online show2021- UK.
PITCH collective video mapping, 2021- Russia.
Finalists Exhibition -YICCA Art contest 2017/18- Milan (Italy).
Finalists Exhibition – YICCA Art contest 2017/- Rome (Italy).
Finalists Exhibition – Art Laguna Prize 2015 -Venice (Italy).
Finalists Exhibition – Premio Combat Prize 2015- Livorno (Italy).
International Gallery Of The Arts (IGOA). online exhibition 2017.
ARTIST IN RESIDENCY:
Artist Residency Programme By Kerala Lalit Kala Academy, 2017, India.
PUBLICATION:
Abirpothi, India’s only daily art newspaper, 09/10/2024, 2024.
Artists of the Month, October 2021, Wendy.network.
Artist profiles, May 1918, ArtSlant.
Wotisart Magazine,12th August 2017.
ART Habens, 1916.
EXHIBITION PARTICIPATION:
J.N.T.U. College of Fine Arts Annual Exhibitions;
1988,1989,1990,1991.
All India Art Exhibitions, The Hyderabad Art Society;1988,1989,1990,1991,1992,1993,1994.
P.S. Telugu University Exhibition of Art, Hyderabad; 1997.
ARTIST CAMPS: Andhra Pradesh Young Artists Camp by A.P. Govt., 1997,1998,1999,2000
Artistic Method & Positioning
Maddilety’s practice examines how matter, ideas, and perceptions dissolve and re-form across cycles. Informed by Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC), he works across digital and physical media to trace shifting structures within this universe. By treating transformation as his primary medium, he positions instability and re-formation as central forces shaping visual experience and meaning. His approach connects everyday materials with cosmic logic, revealing how the microscopic and the vast continually mirror one another.