HYDERABAD: The ongoing show at Kalakriti Art Gallery brings forth the works of students from Indus International school, pursuing their diploma in visual arts. The show imbibes into itself an interesting allegory that unveils many ideas, anecdotes and processes of the real world and beyond.
The group of students have been mentored by Piu Mahapatra. The students have worked on concepts and have come up with visual array of thoughts that completely support and enhance the core of their concept/idea.
The works by Shambhavi explore the concept of beauty. In her works she unveils the standard, conventional and superficial aspects of physical beauty, often asking questions to herself and then answering them too, in a visual language. She has consistently and ardently unveiled a single quest/thought from varied perspectives and using different media.
Shambhavi has symbolically used the process of metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly to explore the abstract, in between stages that are an indispensable part of the process. In another work she has assembled a few ready made objects like a plastic bag as a base of the work, a mask, hand painted by the artist to exemplify the lost/confused concepts of real beauty. It signifies the materialistic /plastic and skin deep beauty concepts that are popularly sold for business purposes, and defy the spirit of what true beauty should be propagated as. In the series of photographs that celebrate the beauty of creases, folds and wrinkles, is perhaps the young artists final set of works that appreciate the importance of experience and meaningful life that depends upon the fact that how many lives were touched by you as a human being and made a positive impact on the family and society as a bigger picture.
Her work, Beautiful Nannama, exemplifies the artists very personal and objective perspective for beauty where she has realized that beauty is not skin deep but it gets radiated with an unsurpassable luminescence of a mind and entity that lies well beyond the periphery of the physical limits.
The works by Crystal traverse through the moments of distress that a person is subjected to/goes through in life. She embraces her medium of expression with a play of colour with symmetrical colour impressions (decalcomania technique), on the background she works with a systematic arrangement of patterns, measured and repeated with finesse. The motifs in the background balance and compliment the accidental smudge of colour in the center of the works. While the experimental, colour juxtapositions create an impact of instances that are not in our control and yet we have to face them, the artists finely rendered, self-planned motifs contrast and reflect the persons attempt to handle the crisis in her own way.
Crystal has also worked in embroidery where she reinstates the attachment and detachment in blood relations. She weaves the concept with a sensitivity that reaches out to the viewer immediately. Her series of works, titled, ‘My Search for Lotus’ reinstate the young artist’s search for peace and tranquillity, in these works she amalgamates certain metaphorically strong images that accelerate the strength of her expression. Like, sand clock, symbol of Om, lotus and silhouette of Buddha. The works are spanned with a graph in the background that perhaps signifies the artist’s attempts to balance and tranquilise the disasters that are not in one’s control.
Sai Rakshith, a sensitive and an ardent nature lover explores the changing and ever evolving urban terrain from a very personal perspective. He delves deep into the aspects that are sacrificed for the name of a modern and progressive city. His works are deviated towards social issues and environmental concerns.
He views and reviews, the patches of lost identity of the city of Hyderabad, known for the huge rocks, that made a dominant/picturesque presence in every direction that one could see, have started vanishing from the city scapes and have been replaced by new constructions.
The young artist takes a few steps forward as a responsible and socially concerned citizen to unveil the true, real and painful aspects of our surroundings and makes a serious effort to initiate or ignite a spark of realization in the minds of his viewers.
At times he draws inspiration from the Indian mythological stories and other times the works of other artists. The best part of his work is the fact that he is striving hard to create awareness about something which is very close to his heart, his beloved, rocks that are a symbol of strength and stability to him, he looks forward to retaining the presence of these solid, gigantic natural structures. The works are simple, symbolic and composed in such a manner that they are easily interpreted by the viewers and the message gets surely conveyed.
The show promises to an art lover a contemplative and visually charged journey where the works by these very young artists have excelled in touching myriad nooks and corners of human existence with a marked grace and talent, that speaks for itself.
The present show will go on at Kalakriti Art Gallery till April 24.