The first quality of Tom Vattakuzhy’s large paintings that catches the viewer’s eye is that they are awash with a soft, warm light that is almost like twilight, yet not quite—the kind of half-light one associates with French artist Balthus. It’s this quality that gives Vattakuzhy’s canvases their surreal look. The artist’s first solo exhibition, The Shadows of Absence, is on at the Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Kolkata till July 25. Curated by R Siva Kumar, it brings together 16 major works and is presented by the Indian Institute of Contemporary Art with support from AstaGuru. The paintings are grounded in the everyday life of rural Kerala, yet they seem to suggest a life beyond the mundane.
Two of Vattakuzhy’s most beautiful paintings show two little girls—Balthus’ favourite subjects—basking in the glory. In Before the Rain, one little girl tries to hastily remove the white sheet drying outside before the dark skies open up. In the second painting, Evening, another young girl peers into a glass jar, framed by a rectangle of light, her deep shadow cast on the wall she faces. But while the Polish-French modern artist’s glowing often controversial paintings are erotically charged, in Vattakuzhy’s paintings, the luminosity seems to emanate not from any physical source but from the feeling of spirituality that seems to pervade them.
The 58-year-old artist says, “I like to place my work in the twilight region of the real and the surreal, or fact and fiction. I know it is a slippery path. However, I engage with it in order to create an apparently tangible yet elusive visual experience.” Vattakuzhy specialised in printmaking at Shantiniketan and Baroda and spent several years abroad thereafter. Initially, he had been trained at a local art school and was an art teacher for some time in Kerala. He associated with writers and filmmakers, and did literary illustrations for the Malayalam periodical, Mathrubhumi, before joining Shantiniketan. He says, “All the figures and images are metaphors that tell you something deeper of the ethos of life. In the same way, the use of light has a symbolic connection with the work. The light is not just light. It is integrated with my work and helps generate a psychological mood.”
In The Evening Sleep of an Old Man (Triptych), a triangular slice of this light shines on the features of the bony old man slumbering with his eyes shut and mouth gaping in his arm chair. He is surrounded by children. He is unwell. He holds his catheter in one hand. A woman has partially drawn the curtain of a window and looks out as if in anticipation. The human beings Vattakuzhy paints are lost in their own world. A pregnant woman sleeps in a chair. Her little daughter—bathed in the warm radiance—looks farther afield as farm workers return home. A calendar shows Fra Angelico’s painting, Annunciation. The Christian symbolism is unmistakable. Vattakuzhy admires Renaissance art. It is more pronounced in the painting Seller of Stars, which shows a booth selling lamps for Christmas.
All the paintings seem to be loaded with untold tales that they merely hint at. As Siva Kumar says, “Vattakuzhy’s works are subdued. He allows you to enter and discover the narration for yourself. The religious element is incidental. The human element is at the core.” While the here-and-now realism of the paintings places them firmly within the lush greenery of Kerala, the spirituality is also unmistakable. Vattakuzhy says despite his Christian upbringing, the spirituality in his work has “nothing to do with religiosity. There is a yearning for a spiritual experience in any human being”, and this is what he aims to bring forth with each work.