Potpourri of Images
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Trivial human deeds are given life with colourful strokes by seven artists at the ongoing painting exhibition ‘Invisible Hands’. By visualizing situations often left unnoticed or neglected, the creative hands represent complex modern sensibilities which lie dormant in our society. The artists hail from different parts of Kerala and have come together for the exhibition being organised by Gallery the Creant, Sasthamangalam.
Shaju Nellai, influenced by Buddhism and its principles, has based most of his paintings on the same. In his paintings, you visualize the qualities of peace, submissiveness and human bond with nature. Of his three works, ‘Invasion’, a charcoal and water colour painting, depicts the statue of Lord Buddha on a bloody war field where thousands are lying dead. The painting juxtaposes the lack of peace and unity amongst people even in a land following the tenets of Buddhism.
In the painting ‘Cognition’ he paints the picture of Buddhist monks clad in maroon robes sitting at a paddy field, contributing their share of efforts in cultivating paddy. It conveys the message that while it is easy to preach about going green it takes a lot of effort to practice it in real life.
Jyotilal’s ‘Lost steps’ has a bird flying parallel to an aircraft and the two appear as if they are about to collide. Through his water colour paintings, Jyothilal tries to deconstruct the modern idea of images and its invisibilities to make them tangible.
His ‘eternal homeland’ depicts a flight taking off from a ground predominated by all sorts of bizarre worldly issues. Jyotilal in his paintings tries to include elements of war, politics, spirituality and the bond between human beings and mother earth.
MP Nishad’s paintings are mostly the end result of adding creativity to the unseen past. Its an imaginative blend of society, art and culture. One of his paintings has a dark woman surrounded with sharp objects depicting the possibilities of danger, agony and pain that she has to face within society.
Often we see people at the railway station tired of waiting for their train, taking a nap on the iron benches fixed on the platforms. One such scene is depicted in the acrylic on canvas painting ‘Sleeping Boy’ done by O Sunder. His work ‘counter clockwise’ denotes the timelessness of imagination by traveling back to yester years.
Writing poetry on paintings is the uniqueness which could be figured at the paintings exhibited. Sreelal KS whose acrylic on canvas painting ‘infiltration’ has the words ‘Between the said that is not heard and the heard that is not said’.
These lines are found on the painting of a woman with frozen facial expressions, lost in the agonies of physical and mental torture. The thirst for power we see around is portrayed by Sreelal in his work, ‘For the upper hand’, where many hands are stretched out to be placed on top. In his paintings he simultaneously portrays human beings and objects. ‘Heir Apparent’, is a painting of a throne and a Chinese Sumo wrestler seated next to it, posing a question on the irony of larger-than-life stardom.
Health and organic farming in particular are the elements of Vijayagopal’s paintings. His works, characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtapositions, blend reality with impossibility. With construction objects and other apparatuses, Surendran Karthyayan gives an insight about structures and their making. A shovel, painted against a background filled with colours, is one of its kind.
The exhibition will conclude by April 30. Time - 10 am to 6.30 pm.