Shades of blue dominate the retrospective show of Chennai-based artist K. Natarajan, ‘Endless Canvas’ at the Kala Kendra art gallery at Bharat Nivas in Auroville.
The show is a conceptualisation of memories, with the artist expressing his loneliness inherent in him since childhood, in the urban spaces of the present. The works in acrylic juxtapose protagonists such as winged creatures and human beings against elements of nature and varying landscapes. The works include a tree in icy, desolate surroundings, amplifying the forlorn expression the artist wishes to convey. The forest, or the lack of it, is also a recurring theme in the works.
Art critic Ashrafi Bhagat says that though the works have taken on the remoteness of a distant past, they are laced with cheerful and joyous nostalgia, while appreciating the artist’s representational visual language through the mottling technique, according to a note on the show.
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Mr. Natarajan says he is ‘creating a time’ that is his own through which everyone and everything passes, and an endless canvas of events where nothing stays. “My paintings are those moments when I mark space that is truly mine,” he says of his work.