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CUBIST LANGUAGE One of Krishna Ashok’s works from the series

Art history offers an encyclopaedia of these symbols and metaphors from which the artist can derive his alternate vocabulary for personal expression.

In an exhibition titled ‘Oceanic’ by Krishna Ashok, a Hyderabad-based artist showcasing his works at Vinnyasa Art Gallery, he has interfaced with metaphors as mermaid, lotus, fish and conch to convey his concept of the mystery of life under water and hence obliquely of the conscious and unconscious that contour the external and internal world.

Krishna’s protagonist is the mermaid, a hybrid of human and animal worlds symbolising and exploring a plunge into the unconscious, which are the oceans of dreams, inebriation, lust and death.

The mermaid is an image of sexuality, resonating with feelings of desire and isolation and contains implications of metamorphosis. Mermaids transgress rationality, linked to the sea; they are unstable, changeable, and unreliable when compared to terrestrial things.

Hence they are not “earthy” but “oceanic”. They seduce one into madness, away from lofty thoughts of the superego, going into the nether realms of the subconscious. Mermaids create a state of being called “ocean consciousness”.

With this powerful metaphor, Krishna then brings together symbols such as shell, lotus, fish and bird each with their associative meaning. By interpolating with these traditional symbols Krishna also is gesturing towards the inherent duality of the physical and metaphysical.

Hence the snail implies the world outside and within, the lotus emerging from the murky waters as the conscious and subconscious as well as enlightenment, the bird, a liberation of the spirit while the fish inherently a creature of the water translates as series of ideas for the artist.

Having established his conceptual base, Krishna evolves his artistic language through the faceted and fragmented forms of cubism.

According to him, “The Picasso show in Mumbai in 2002, was the turning point, when I was attracted to the cubist style and decided to move away from illustrations which I was doing for Telugu newspapers.”

Hence a glance at his works confirms his intense attraction to the cubist language.

Thus with ease one journeys through his composition that invariably contain the duality of the earth and water the division articulated through his engagement with symbols as fish, mermaid and the man and his terrestrial world.

Worked exclusively with acrylics either on canvas or paper another heightening dimension of his work is the use of a kaleidoscopic palette the richness of tones and hues vibrate with singular vivacity.

The dominant linearity manifests his composition defining the solidity of his forms whether terrestrial or oceanic.

The delineation of the eyes meditative and contemplative, a distinct feature derived from plastic and pictorial tradition has been converted into a fish.

Thus from his position, tradition and cultural philosophy play a seminal role that helps in aiding his personal expressions as well as concepts interfaced through a cubist language.

Krishna is a self-taught artist. Starting his career as an illustrator after his graduation in physics, the intense calling towards art, initiated his journey through illustrations and he has now arrived with his visual language.

The show is on at Vinnyasa Gallery until January 10.

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