Where Dreams Meet Reality

Where Dreams Meet Reality

CHENNAI: How did Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the prolific composer of the 1700s, look? There is no photo of Mozart available, but that did not stop city-based artist Vinod Rajagopalan from making a portrait of him. “I put a gramophone in place of Mozart’s head to convey that he was a musical genius,” he says. In yet another installation, Vinod had the lower half of a mannequin done in ceramic and the upper half in canvas. “My works aim at making people rethink what they know about reality, and break the purity of concept. My art pieces juxtapose dreams and reality,” says Vinod, who also dabbles cartooning and advertising. The artist, whose works are currently displayed at the Splatter Studio on ECR, attributes his quirky ideas to his two biggest inspirations — 20th century revolutionary artists Maxfield Parrish and Marcel Duchamp. They belonged to a school of thought called Dadaism, an art movement that began in Europe in the early 20th century and rejected the traditional modes of artistic creation. “Their style of art which was rebellious and cynical, can also be called anti-art. For example, in one of his works, Marcel used a urinal and presented a fountain on it. Such concepts are not generally used in art,” he says. 

Vinod says that when he first heard about the concept of Dadaism, he knew his works fell under this genre. “I read a lot about it when I was in school. And whenever I tried to have a conversation about it with my friends or show them my works personally, they did not understand it. That’s when I knew I had learnt the art,” says Vinod with a laugh.

The exhibition titled ‘Reality’ is on at Splatter Studio, ECR, till December 6.

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