March 1998, artist Viswanadhan stood in front of his works at the NGMA, Delhi and said: “You can’t have a journey in painting if you don’t have the ability to see beyond things. You must sustain a sensibility of observation. I learnt to find geometry and symbolism in the reservoir between the visible and the invisible.”
18 years hence, Paris-based Vishwanadhan’s solo, “Experience and Energy” opens at Nature Morte Delhi. On view are 14 paintings spanning 25 years (1991 to 2016). Viswanadhan is unique for his medium – he uses casein, a paint made from proteins derived from milk. “It is casein which gives Viswanadhan’s works their mysterious glow and almost inner source of light,” says Peter Nagy. “Over the years, his colours as well as his compositions have been continually honed, resulting in painting in its perhaps most purified state.”
Crimson Tide
You are swept into canvasses that are an anecdote of the spirit, realms of smoky toned crimson tide, it rides on the rhetoric of reflection, it plumbs the embers of instincts and intuitions and draws you into the nuances of ‘indigenous modernism.’
For an artist who has worked arduously over five decades finding the depth of colourative chasms in casein these corollaries are born of meditative moorings, with resonant reds in ascendance.
Almost like a Thyagaraja kriti that carries in its womb the notes of winter waiting to bloom into the rapture of spring – it’s a glimpse into a modern mandala. You think of the poojas done for the Bhagvathy, the flaming Theyyam dancers, you think of the Chethi/ Thechi flower used for the Thechi undamala (thechi garland) offered at the Guruvayoor Temple in Kerala. In this recurrent realm of chromatics we see a melding of mysterious and moody reverberations – a balance between Western abstraction and exploration of matter and meaning, synthesised into geometric harmonies of colour and luminosity.
While you discern the sophistication of his sensibility you know that abstraction for Viswanadhan is more than colour, more than light that glows, it is the summation of an inward odyssey. And the geometry of the dipped in colour fields a sojourn – like a raga alpana – in early works the verdant green, leafy lyric is touched by a turmeric tone or hibiscus red that enchants (Untitled 1991 and 2001). In that melding, the capturing of light is enhanced by the resonant flow of experiences – colour is carried on the wings of evanescence.
Chords in harmony
The crucibles of geometry and chromatic tones of works on the walls whisper the harmony of chords. Words diminish and a tantric tradition of auratic echoes deepen the rhythms of resonance. What is it about these colours? Viswanadhan allows the velvet timbred, wine toned crimsons to glow and fade, you want to breathe in hue after hue, when a warm yellow peeks (2001), it speaks of the sunrise on the sea. Sometimes, the rippling russets and verdant greens hint at tropical plants, sometimes the burnt sienna of the sunset (2005) that changes amidst seasons as it embraces the particles of sand. But more than the cantata of colours, it is the poise and balance that plays like a raga.
What runs as a common thread over 25 years, is Viswanadhan’s love for the rhythmic rise and fall of associations and memories that unravel like legendary lyrics in the lingua franca of the grammar of geometry bathed in colour. These works are deceptively minimal but maximal in intent – they have been through the prism of time, intricately storied and subverted in the contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored perfectly in a silent, yet supple, periodic perspective of inner harmonies.
Vishwanadhan has always maintained that an artist is an outsider. And this distance is one that lends perspective. He quotes James Joyce, “I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
Perception of time
What does the viewer take back? Viswanadhan gives the viewer a subtle yet subconscious analysis of the perception of time. The essence of the strict geometry of forms tells us that structure is internally stratified in the mind of an artist. And within those layers is a fundamental layer of perceptual presence. It is born of the mosaic of a thousand experiences that have filtered through time. It has gone through the sieve of memory, associations, primitive practices in Indian expression born of an accumulation of inchoate experiences. Intriguing how the artist’s perception is recreated through the energy of his ‘act of seeing ’.
At 76 years, Viswanadhan plays solitaire. The ‘outsider’ artist reflects a voracious reader, a thinker, one who has continuously churned his thoughts within the wheel of inner inheritance. The artist’s ‘act of seeing ’ becomes the abacus of his own language – it unravels the quality of surfaces as well as depths to which he explores his own incantations in expression. Literary allusions flow through translucent layers.
Yet through the mandala of meanderings there exists a monochromatic melancholia, a resonant human effectiveness born of Dravidian living, red earth and copper sun. This show at Nature Morte Delhi is about how imperative the visible and invisible are in exploring the perceptual roots of metaphoric moorings. When Viswanadhan says, “The void is essential for imagining things” you know how experience is translated into a visual construct and how materiality can unfold within the odyssey of time. This artist stands tall in the practice of abstraction – his colour fields are expressions fused in the shift from visual to tactile perceptions.
From the transparency of air to the grains of sand to the sombre density of velvet darkness he exemplifies the truth that “material is the base of the spirit.” And abstract master, Mark Rothko’s words echo through the show: ‘Silence is so accurate.’
