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‘Why is everyone lighting up lamps?’
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Three artists, three places and the coursing stream of imagination appears to have walled up
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Imagination and reality Aditya Basak’s Icarus
Sab log bulb kyon laga rahen hai. Yeh bulb me kya baat hai,” says artist Jatin Das as he looks at the multi-media works of Masuram Ravikanth. Fresh from a dekko of Aditya Basak’s works that went on display on Sunday brunch time, the feeling of deja vu is understandable in Jatin Das’s mind. Don’t tread on the incandescent bulbs with wings as you enter the Kalahita Art Gallery, they are a work of art. Ravikanth sees the idiom of the lamp and uses its symbolism in Indian milieu to have a twisted look at the world that was there, is there and will be there. The lamp turns into a metaphor for various things, encompassing the sexual poses of Kamasutra to babies bawling to kings and emperors training guns, to pages torn out of school books. Then as a matter of fact, he uses the comic book idiom to drive home lessons from history with the omniscient lamp posing a question. Using strips of bands to mentally hold the painting together.
The idiom and the mode of communication is a disorienting thing, but try to see the grasp over the medium Masuram has and there is a surprise in store for you. A perfect sense of geometry and draughtsmanship gives the artless images a sense of purpose and rob them of levity.
The show is on till November 30.
Masuram Ravikant
Buddha and optimism
It is an al fresco brunch at the Kalakriti Art Gallery and small talkabout art where the artist Aditya Basak wearing a blue batik Hawaiian shirt and French beard holds forth on his works that are on display.
He hands out a printed paper about his optimism about a world where one set is the perpetrators of violence and another set is seen as victims. The paper sums up his vision: “There is a light at the end of the tunnel”. Mounted on the canvas is the similar incandescent lamp imagery. But instead of the irreverent images, Aditya Basak paints that symbol of peace and renunciation: Gautama Buddha. The Buddha images are as if they have walked out of Bamiayan with cracks, warts, et al. To create the effect, Aditya uses the medium that he is experimenting with: Tempera on board. “From the beginning I have been working tempera on board. I began with acid-free handmade paper. This isn’t egg tempera, I am experimenting with acrylics, inks, oils, it is a perfect mixed media,” he says. “The medium is just an extension about what I want to create. My paintings have darkness predominating but there is a crack of dawn. Just like our life, there is chaos, suffering and pain but it is bordered with optimism,” says Aditya about his paintings that have titles like Faces, The Load, The Leap and Icarus. Icarus, that symbol of flight, which recurs through human mythology with other names. “I cannot do these works fast, I have to live for some time with my paintings, sometimes it requires 25 days to complete one painting,” says Aditya about his paintings that have a lot of detailing with patterns repeating themselves. “When I started my work it was very difficult to survive just by doing painting, I worked as an architect and interior decorator before painting became my sole source of life and work,” says Aditya about the good times artists are having.
Aqeel’s untitled works
The show is on till December 2.
Let the music play
From yards away, it looks like a National Geographic photograph of a tropical sea clicked from under the waves of sea as a school of fish eddy in a circle, a splash of sunlight shimmering of the silver scales of the fish. It isn’t. Step up close to any of Aqeel’s canvas and the eddying pools of colour and light transform into objects of music, sound and dance. “There is more knife work than brush strokes in each of these paintings,” says Aqueel as he tries the explain the luminescence in each broad stroke on the canvas. Holding prime space is a painting that looks like sunrise, the light, rather the colours splaying out from one point. On either side are two semi-abstract figures. “It can be seen as sunrise, it can be seen as jugalbandi,” says Aqeel. Revelling in blues and other bright colours, serrating them with the whites and yellows, making them dance to his tunes, Aqeel’s canvases are about drummers, sax players, dancers and singers. The theme is matched by the rhythm that the artist tries to create with his colours and execution. The show at Katriya De Royal is till Nov. 22.
SERISH NANISETTI
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