The gallery space of Labernum and Indigo at Cholamandal Artists Village in Chennai was filled with canvases intricately and skillfully crafted, a mirror with the arrangement of strips of coloured wood attached in front and a series of works depicting the waxing and waning of the moon and the playing card with representation of the king of hearts. The curious aspect of the show was its title—Attachment—with representation from three Chennai artists—Ganesh Selvaraj, Yuvan Bothisathavur and Narayanan Veeraraghavan as part of Art Chennai 2014. These artists have been experimenting to evolve their visual language, by engaging with varied themes to articulate philosophical and personal expressions. Their working process is laborious, involving the craft of cutting and pasting ‘ideas’ with consummate skill. The strong design patterning that underpin their works has echoes of Madras Art Movement.
Ganesh in his large mixed media works [6’ x 6’] titled Doing the same thing and expecting different result and Irregular becomes regular offers insights into the concept of repetition and mindless doodling. While the first title has been derived from Albert Einstein’s “Doing the same thing and expecting different result is insane”, Ganesh, clarifies his method of construction. “I tried to execute the idea with about 3000 triangles, wrapping with shredded magazine paper. Finally I assembled the entire triangle and I got a different composition. Maybe the process is insane but the result is different.” Ganesh considers each piece an individual entity of ideas that represent his experiences. His works mark a different posturing, particularly in its approach to material and configuration. There is verve, vitality and a dynamism in his creations that took more than 12 months to complete.
Narayanan’s concepts are driven by his emotional urges. He has worked with different media—pencil, pastels, silk-screen, digital drawing, acrylics, wood, burnt-wood pieces in combination of two or three media. In his New Moon to Full Moon and Full Moon to New Moon, the artist clarifies, “It never loses nor gains in its identity,” philosophically reflecting fixed opinions and attitudes to life. In Losing and Gaining Identity, the artist explains the correspondence of the idea with procedural methodology. “I create an image in a full-size paper with acrylic colour or pastel and cut the image or paper into small thin strips and number it as 1,2,3,4,5... then I paste all even number strips on one paper and the odd number strips on another paper. It gives me same images on two different papers. There is 2mm empty space between all the strips”. The distortion of image in the process was the transformation of change which gained a different identity. Narayanan transcends to a philosophic plane, where the proverbial constant is change itself. His works are symmetrical, creating areas of absorbing interest.
Yuvan’s works are vestiges of his early political hoardings. Says the artist, “Scale has always been my forte since my billboard painting days, and I wanted to make a work that would be large.” He later extended the realism of these portraits to paint proletariat subject matter. The development to abstract by articulating his concepts through engagement with paper and other materials was perhaps due to certain personal experiences, which made him travel on a philosophical trajectory. “To convert life’s experiences into work had never been a problem as they became concepts. The form of some of my works as ‘Change’ and ‘Broken Mind’ were inspired by ripples on clear water. I think change is something that accumulates slowly and then suddenly one day, hits you”. The intricacy inherent in his art works poignantly establish the complexity of life that is both enigmatic and surprising. Thus the works of three artists clarified a process of philosophical being and becoming that evocatively corresponded to their methodologies. They have investigated the surface to translate as ‘inner thoughts’, ‘existential experiences’, ‘transformation and change’ and capriciousness of nature.