Prakrit Arts recently celebrated the move to its new premises with a small but stately exhibition of paintings and sculptures. ‘The Old Guard and The Young Turks', as the title suggests, featured the works of both senior artists and up and coming talents in the city.
Situated at No. 73 Greenways Road Extension, R.A Puram, the gallery is housed in a graceful old property, and opens out into an attractively rustic sit-out. This was perhaps the perfect setting for C. Dakshinamoorthy's earthy granite sculptures — a Ganesha statue, rough-hewn yet beautifully complete, and a larger piece depicting a group of gossiping women, movement and emotion conjured up in his signature style.
Colourful abstracts
The highlight of the exhibition was a handful of works by the late K.M. Adimoolam, large, sweeping abstracts filled with a gorgeous mix of colours, earthy red-orange-browns or dreamy blue-violet-yellows, marked by the energy of his brushwork. Senior artist K.S. Rao's dreamy, contemplative figuratives added further gravitas to the exhibition. His finely textured oils seemed to glow inward with colour, and beautifully captured mood, whether it was playfulness or piety and prayer.
Lending a bit of an edge to the collection was K. Muralidharan's signature works, in bright, almost kitschy shades of pink, orange, green and blue. His figurative abstracts on mythological themes were reminiscent of tribal etchings, using symbols to lend texture to the works.
And then, you had the mixed-media works of up-and-coming artist R. Baala, which presented a complete departure — both in terms of style and content — from the other works. CDs and floppy disks were used to create stylised imagery of intricate machinery, artistic re-imaginings of technology, whether it was the inner mechanics of a watch, all gold and cream, or hi-tech motherboards, all in red and black. It was, on the whole, a fine first showing at Prakrit's new premises.
