Step into the ground floor of Sarala’s Art Centre and you’re arrested by the piece just across the door. Against a blood-red backdrop overgrown with tangled white squiggles is the clear untouched outline of a person in foetal posture. It’s the centre of internal quiet amid the external chaos of the world, in artist R. Janarthanan’s ‘Nest’. It is such unique articulations of the human condition that unite the widely disparate artistic styles at Sarala’s currently running group show of her gallery’s most recent acquisitions.
While people are at the centre of Janarthanan’s work, they’re microscopic specs in R.S. Shakya’s two pieces — the first of a canvas flooded by golden-yellow leaves and the second of red, purple and orange graded leaves, both of which feature tiny stick figures almost drowned within the confusion of Nature’s flow. In Parag Adhikari’s landscapes too, vast oceans expand across space, while the people are most insignificant. In one acrylic on canvas a single brushstroke of a person manoeuvres a boat alone in a river that segues away into a white haze. In another, red mastheads mark boats moored at a harbour, the people almost miniscule within a sea that blends into the sky. Almost entirely in shades of yellow, brown ochre and dull green, Parag’s pieces resemble sepia-tinted panoramic photographs that have stilled time for good.Adjacent to Parag’s works are Pramathes Chandra’s series of paintings that front people who blend into geometric backgrounds. Equations and lines of scale crawl across a graph sheet through which a person working with protractors and scales slowly emerges. In another piece, a man loses his head into blackness while his body is sectioned into measures squared. The angularity of the shapes stands in sharp contrast to the soft contours of Parag’s people who are outlined in a white chalk-like texture. Geometry is at the centre of artist Alphonse Arul Doss’ series using Buddha motifs too. Similar in style to his earlier ‘Time and Space’ line, these paintings feature the Buddha in meditation while squares, triangles and rectangles trace the canvas’ direction of energy. In the single Joydip Sengupta piece on display as well, a gymnast juggles triangles while balancing on a tiger as a massive machine rumbles on behind. The work falls in line with much of Sengupta’s pieces that foreground humans against images of industrialisation.
In their comments on mankind, these artists draw greatly from the past. Both Swapan Kumar Palley’s works draw on Egyptian hieroglyphics and images of Pharaohs, as do Amitabh Sengupta’s untitled pieces that recall ancient scrolls with their inscriptions faded by the years gone by. Single pieces by Chennai-based artists are also present at the group show. They include K. Muralidharan’s abstract work of anthropomorphic figures, contemporary artist R.B. Bhaskaran’s solo canvas using his oft-returned-to cat motif, and Sam Adaikalasamy’s divided canvas, each section telling its individual story.
The group show is on till the end of July.
