COLOURS AND CONTOURS
This July, the Art Heritage’s group show features paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures of M F Husain, Jai Zharotia, Arun Pandit, Rajesh Deb and others
Art Heritage’s Group Shows have been historic over the 25 years I have watched and visited. Their group shows have had a brilliant alchemy of ceramics and drawings, and paintings and sculptures.
This July, the group show features paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures of M F Husain, Jai Zharotia, G Reghu, Gouri Vemula, Sunanda Khajuria, Arun Pandit, Cop Shiva and the magnificent printmaker Rajesh Deb.
Two vivid colourists are Jai Zharotia and Sunanda Khajuria who traverse visual sensibilities through strong colour tones. Vemula’s intricate colour and black and white drawings on a large scale invite viewers to immerse themselves in her detailed landscape where man and nature are entwined in a mystical, bucolic life.
It is the two sculptors, Arun Pandit and G Reghu, who mesmerise with their handling of figurative fervour. Pandit’s human figures cast in their original mold are a blend of human dynamics and conversations. The beauty of his works lies in the power and the pathos that his subjects render in their expressive togetherness. News and family are two works that catch your eye for their endearing power of dialogue as well as the deepened expressive angst of modern-day leanings.
The ceramic master who does brilliant bronzes is G. Reghu. His emotive anthropomorphic figures embody a multi-layered atmosphere centered around his study and close involvement with the tribal arts from central India. The most telling factor in his works is the historical and aesthetic dialogue that he gives us with the subjects that echo rural rhythms, and an absolutely singular note of humility and gravitas that weave in through his figures with pronounced features. Rajesh Deb’s mastery of the woodcut style can also be found applied to his box sculpture Pandora’s Box. Deb has an intrinsic inherent intuitive understanding of figurative thematics and this comes to the fore in this magnificent rendition. Unique photographs on silver foil photo paper of cinema hoardings and graffiti on street walls by M F Husain captures India’s popular culture from 1980s Chennai, recognizing it as the authentic, intense visual culture that develops within a teeming, urban metropolis. Finally, Cop Shiva’s photographs provide a panoramic view of the manifestations of myth and ritual, as seen in an urban context along with a series of intimate portraits of urban migrants, people of alternative lifestyle and street performers who virtually live in the hinterland of urban and rural conflict.
Two vivid colourists Jai Zharotia and Sunanda Khajuria traverse visual sensibilities through strong colour tones, where as the sculptors Arun Pandit and G Reghu mesmerise with their handling of figurative fervour The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it - Oscar Wilde