HYDERABAD: When avant-garde Russian Futurism was taking place, the space of something remote was rejected and instead art as life bloomed in snow-covered art circles of the bygone era. And this art shapes itself as a cluster of unique opuses pulling the viewer in to its pervasive periphery. Such works of art flow like dissected notes of music and create a flow that is impossible to ignore even to somebody who is not remotely connected to art and its related perceptions. A walk into the Dhi Artspace Gallery presents exactly this. The flow is from the oeuvres of painter Srihari Bholekar. The exhibition of his works in ink is on display till December 5.
The exhibition is aptly titled ‘The Unknown’ as the works on display have abstract shapes yet present a sense of discipline in shapes and dimensions unknown to human eye. Bholekar has used black ink to carve his work on the white canvas. The lines flow in accordance with each other and moves swiftly to form clusters thick enough to take shapes on their own. The curvature moves leaving spaces between the juxtaposition of lines and dots creating a tense work that lies strictly within its periphery yet challenges the viewer to explore the outer dimension where it spills on its own like cosmic energy. And this doesn’t result in any resounding chaos but a reticent upheaval in ink that is complete within itself taking shapes on its own and at the same time leaves blank spaces for the white space to breathe and the eye to decipher more in the ink-strokes.
How such intricate works can catch the attention of a layman? By its complexity that is arranged as a pattern and yet dictates simplicity. A simple man that the artist Bholekar himself is he was so passionate about studying art that he’d run away from his Hyderabad home. Elegantly sitting in the gallery the 75-year-old artist shares, “I had gone to Nampally Station hiding under a bench. My parents found me and I was brought home and then sent to art school i.e., JJ School of Art.” So far he has received 40 awards including one National Award. An avid print-maker the print of his works are on display in museums of Poland, Italy and Macedonia. He laments, “Art in South India lacks originality. Hyderabad and Karnataka are just surviving in the name of Art. Artists are thriving in the city, but an MFA does not make just anyone an artist!”
As an expert artist he has kept his works in tandem with one another as if they were synchronized on piano keys creating their own lyricism. This is the rhythm that Bholekar’s works produce on the sense of aesthetics that bring to life the exactitude of tension maintained between the depth of an artist’s canvas and moodiness of flowing ink. The end result is a harmony that resonates binding other elements to its musicality. One finds shades of Henri Matisse’s genius in this cosmic flow that was there but faded away with other ‘isms’. No ‘Yellow Curtain’ blooms, but the dots open a window that provides an insight in the artist’s thought process that is instant yet slow and moves at its own speed creating a blast of imageries.