‘Aspirations', an exhibition of paintings and sculptures by MFA students of the Government College of Fine Arts, is a bit of a revelation. The works are remarkably self-assured and inventive, with the students displaying a striking sense of personal artistic style.
You have, for instance, M. Srinivasan's wonderfully creative oils on canvas in which shapes of cows emerge out of a flurry of short black and white or brown and black brushstrokes. Or Mohan Subramani's gorgeously coloured images of street dancers and actors performing or preparing for performances, paintings simply filled with movement and bursting with energy.
There are Theenabanthu K.'s appealing charcoal and acrylic works, all finely textured deep rust and black, with characteristic cube-like figures that emanate happiness, goodness and warmth. And then you have Siviya Menon's mixed media works, in which intense emotions — anger against oppression, a mother's protectiveness of her unborn child — jump out at you through powerful imagery.
G. Ratheesh's enigmatic paintings of the feminine form are about long, graceful necks, large glowing eyes and deeply moody colours, and serve to underline the distinctive creative vision these students bring to their works. As does Vel Murugan B.'s rooster fight series, which is pure, raw creativity at play, with so much movement captured in fast, furious brushstrokes that you can see the feathers fly.
And that just about scratches the surface, with a number of other eye-catching works vying for your attention, such as Vinoth Kamaraj's beautifully coloured abstracts, filled with light and shade and tons of texture; Achudan R.'s bucolic, sepia-toned landscapes and Vijay Pichumani's vast, verdant images of Nature, and a whole lot more.
Dotted amidst these paintings, you have a series of sculptures, ranging from P. Suresh's etched, textured wooden faces, filled with charm and personality, to Swapana A.'s delicate bronze dancing girls, V. Ravindran's sturdy bronze lions and elephants, and Vel Murugan K.'s smooth, delicately-detailed stone sculptures.
The exhibition is on till March 20.
