The Hindu : New Delhi News : An IITian’s parallel world of art

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Wednesday, Aug 20, 2008
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An IITian’s parallel world of art

‘Sunflower’: Art on canvas by Ravi Gossain.

A week-long exhibition of paintings by Delhi-based corporate employee-turned-artist Ravi Gossain is now on at Alliance Francaise de Delhi at 72 Lodhi Estate.

Titled “Me, Myself, My Obsession…And My Area Of Peace”, the exhibition was inaugurated by noted artist Satish Gujral over the weekend. The show has been hosted by Ragini Arts and is on till this Saturday.

An alumnus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Gossain’s first solo exhibition was held way back in 1970 at the IIT campus. For more than two decades, he worked with top corporate companies and traversed over 35 countries.

After a long sabbatical, Gossain mounted three consecutive solo shows from 2002 to 2004 on “Sunflower and Space” series at Visual Arts Gallery of India Habitat Centre.

Gossain says though he was engrossed in the corporate world, he found time to continue his love for painting. “One room was always designated for art works, even while I was staying overseas. It was like a studio and I kept painting but never displayed my works in a show. To become an engineer, surgeon, lawyer, architect and banker you need to undergo training but you cannot become an artist unless there is art and colour in your soul.”

Stating that part of one’s life goes in learning and the other half in understanding, Gossain says: “I am not doing abstract art right now because I feel it is a natural progression for an artist. God willing I may do this type of serious art. Abstract art is the final language.”

According to art critic Keshav Malik, the clarity of Gossain’s work, the wide open spaces and the power of the transformative eye are his artistic arsenal. “His subjects and objects are just the same. But look at what he has done with them. The largeness of his canvas may well have been annoying, as in several other cases, but not so here. By such amplitude, by magnification a very careful one he enthrals us, brings the light of surprise to our own astonished eyes. Oh yes, he knows the grammar of distortion to the hilt. His vetting of a horse’s body parts, for instance; how steeply it raises our pulse rate with that noble animal’s true essence, the blowing wind of a wild spirit.”

Staff Reporter

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