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Wednesday, Jul 23, 2008
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Mocking at reality with a brush

Alchemy of ideas: Amit Ambalal’s painting titled ‘Nat-Raj’ is display at his exhibition in New Delhi.

A special solo exhibition of oil paintings and a large bronze installation by Ahmedabad-based veteran artist Amit Ambalal opened at Delhi’s Gallery Espace in New Friends Colony on Tuesday.

“Recent Works by Amit Ambalal” seeks to create a language that is both recognisable and intensely personal. The exhibition also has on display a special installation of 35 bronze crows that attracted widespread attention when it was first shown in Ahmedabad. It is on view up to August 12.

Trained under artist and teacher Chhaganlal Jadhav, Amit Ambalal’s engagement with the arts extends to a wide ground of historical research, documentation and collection.

Human drama

The artist’s latest body of work can be basically segregated into two categories; one has a contemporary approach to tradition via the popular religious traditions and the other is the historical “Rajasthani Nathdwara” devotional paintings. Part of Ambal’s work also revolves round human drama.

Described as a satirist-painter who develops parody, caricature and mimicry into visual tropes, Amit Ambalal says hypocrisy doesn’t bother him. Instead, he adds, he prefers to splash it on canvas and mock the world. “I don’t decide what to paint beforehand, the initial idea may be from a newspaper photograph I have seen in the morning or an antique sculpture. Then as I am painting, something starts to grow inside that canvas and that takes on the final form on the canvas,” he says.

At the ongoing exhibition, discerning art lovers can observe an elliptical style of autobiographical narrative with Amit, his wife Raksha and their dog Dusky and the monkey-god Hanuman. The outcome is an alchemic mix of ideas that fosters a sense of dislocation.

A prosperous society embedded in a destitute society is often the focus of Amit Ambalal’s creations. His portraits of the country are simple and a direct means to come to terms with the horror he sees around him.

The artist has a unique ability of perceiving quirks and flaws in human behaviour and making them part of his great pictorial scheme on canvas. It has often been noticed in his canvases that where his faces, bodies and gestures are devices of his irony, it’s the colour, design and texture that give his paintings the light and easy mood.

Latest influence

The exhibition showcases his recent works in the oil medium, part of a series influenced by his recent trips to South-East Asia where he was invited for artist residency.

“The exotic island of Bali has always intrigued me with its underlying likeness with our own visual culture. The legends of Mahabharata and Ramayana are brought to life in the pictorial images that we see in the Far East as also the Ajanta and Ellora caves of India. What is indeed fascinating about the Far East Culture is the harmonious relationship that man shares with nature resonating his acceptance to all its forms, be it gods or demons. Vivid images of graceful women in temple processions and idiosyncratic protagonists, human and otherwise, thus find their way on to my picture plane,” says Amit Ambalal.

Madhur Tankha

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