Black and white, in Movement 2.0, is less a limitation of palette than a way of thinking about form. With colour stripped away, the paintings rely on the interplay of light and dark, the sweep of a brushstroke, the energy of a gesture and the silence of the untouched canvas.
What remains is the essence of a subject, caught somewhere between the recognisable and the abstract.
For Mahinth Gokul, this pared-back approach is a way of capturing a subject without describing every detail. His oil and acrylic paintings explore the point at which familiar forms begin to dissolve into abstraction, drawing inspiration from Japanese sumi-e ink painting and Chinese calligraphy.
These ideas come together in Movement 2.0, his seventh solo exhibition, on view at Maverick Studio & Art Gallery in Thiruvananthapuram.
“The core idea of my art is always to capture the interplay between abstraction and realism, along with the movement of nature. I want to show the essence of a subject and its inherent movement in a minimalist way,” says Gokul.
The title, Movement 2.0, presented by ORA – An Artist’s Home, refers to two kinds of movement: the motion inherent in the paintings and the response they evoke in those who look at them. Gokul seeks to give visible form to the first, leaving the second to unfold in the viewer’s mind.
“Even within what appears motionless, movement continues. The artist merely gives visible form to that invisible movement,” he says.
There is, however, a departure from the monochrome palette. Among the 25 paintings on display is an acrylic work on plastic that changes colour with the viewer’s position.
From one angle, it glows in shades of orange, red and brown; from another, pink and green emerge. Shift again, and the surface takes on a golden hue.
The work brings a different kind of movement into the exhibition, one that depends as much on the viewer as on the painting itself.
Based in the US, Gokul works as a management consultant. He studied engineering at the College of Engineering, Thiruvananthapuram, before pursuing an MBA at Cusat in Kochi. Painting, however, has remained a constant.
“I started painting when I was 13. But even when I moved into a different profession, I could never leave painting behind. It has always been with me,” he says.
His work has also taken him around the world, offering opportunities to encounter art across traditions and periods.
“By the time I was in my thirties, I had visited almost all the famous galleries, some of them multiple times, and had great conversations with masters,” he says.
“These experiences made me realise that my art needed to develop. I wanted to find my own signature and make my work distinct. That journey has continued ever since.”
Having trained in classical styles under different masters, Gokul later turned his attention to contemporary painters and their approaches. His work has since featured in group exhibitions and solo shows in India and abroad.
The Movement series is part of his continuing effort to make sense of the world and translate his responses to it into art.
For Gokul, the process is as much about knowing when to stop as it is about mastering technique. A painting, he believes, must retain an element of uncertainty. Not every attempt is guaranteed to succeed.
“Technique is not the hardest part of painting. Every work must carry the possibility that it may not succeed. I listen to the canvas to understand when a painting is complete. That is how I have approached every work,” he says.
Perhaps that is also the invitation extended by Movement 2.0 — to slow down, look beyond the obvious and allow a painting to reveal itself in its own time.
“The idea is to let the art take centre stage, and for people to spend time with the paintings and feel the movement in them,” he adds.
Movement 2.0 by Mahinth Gokul, which is on view at Maverick Studio & Art Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram, will conclude on October 31. Entry is free for school and college students; other visitors are charged Rs 150.