HYDERABAD: Artist Bommidi Srinivas Reddy is usually a reticent person, humble and happy in his own way. But when we juxtapose his work beside his personality, the picture perceived is quite striking: vibrant, highly textured works belies the silent crusader of the brush. The ongoing exhibition titled ‘The Unknown City’ at Ailamma Art Gallery in Bagh Lingampalli invites a special interest as Srinivas Reddy takes a digression from a graphic preoccupation of drawings to an expressionistic painterly format.
It’s an interesting creative journey for this artist who produced hundreds of linear drawings of idyllic landscapes that reflected the purity of thought and emotions and, were finely and skillfully rendered. In fact, his drawings appear like engravings portraying an innocence of life experienced in the midst of nature.His art statement reflects his emotions: “Away Away from my village deep into the woods, wondering with my sketch books speaking to the trees, rocks and streams, with my pencil and charcoal. Gazing at the morning sky, moving clouds passing by sitting under the palm tree for hours which seems touching the clouds that were my childhood and my world.”
He adds, “To be an artist, the journey took me from the small untouched world, my village to the bigger world the city which was unknown to me. At first, everything seems magic to me: the speeding bus, the rushing crowd and building touching the sky, travelling from my small village to the unknown city for hours, day after day for years. Looking at the buildings big and small far and near passing by to know, to discover:
I paint, I paint,
I paint for hours for days for years
I paint the buildings
I paint them big
I paint them small
I paint them light
And some time black and white
I paint them far and I paint them near
But still, I’m not clear why it is unknown to me”.
The array of abstract paintings, from the second segment of his life, portrays his feeling of dislocation. When he leaves his village not just the topography drastically alters but the pace of time also gets shifted. Speed leads him into a space that fills his canvas with myriad colours merging one into the other. At times appearing like ruins and sometimes a minaret rise from the impasto applications. Although, he meets life in the lanes and bylanes of his created habitats the feeling of uprootedness and dislocation seems to linger on.
The only thing which seems to provide him with some solidity is the volume of colour which he sagaciously divides it between the teeth of a comb. Brushing the impastos on the canvas Srinivas attempts to create a rhythm and some semblance of his city life. Therefore, traversing between the city and his village, Rampally, the painter is on a quest to find a meaning of the duality. The duality of the known and the unknown now seem to provide the material but yet the essence has to be discovered.
This exhibition is on till February 5 and can be viewed between 12 noon to 8 pm