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Veiling the Façade

Dr. Ashrafi S. Bhagat analyses the sculptural renditions of the Chennai based artist Yuvaraj and says that this artist makes use of the traditional and contemporary knowledge of materials in order to produce critical commentaries on the contemporary social life.

Sculpture today has become a versatile arena particularly the wide gamut of materials which the artist can arbitrate from technological to traditional.  It has fired the artist’s imagination by pushing the development of visual language to communicate concepts and forms.  Over the last two and half decades’ contemporary sculpture has marked important signpost, particularly in terms of materials, concepts, forms and medium.  The materials include both new and traditional as latex, wax, polyester fibres, resin, papier mache, leather, epoxy, canvas, ceramic, sheet metal, wood, granite, aluminum, stuffed polythene including the use of water put to innovative use.

Sculpture as a medium of expression within the contemporary milieu has thus gained currency leading to appreciation and hence the much required visibility.  The space has finally opened to allow this traditional medium to gain valence along with painting.

Recently a show of sculptures was organized at Ashvita Arts and Artifacts in Chennai.  The works were executed by a young sculptor Yuvaraj, who had articulated his conceptual approach that gave his sculptures innovative freshness and distinct character.  The idea was self reflexive translating as autobiographical wherein the sculptor had mapped his experiences in his works; reflecting simultaneously also on his philosophy of masquerade which remains inherent to human nature.  The sculptures are mainly half figures/busts mediated through materials as wood and metal.  His works mark a site for negotiation of his empiricity and perceptions of life within his immediate environment.  In other words his art becomes a process of sublimation.

K.G. Subramanyan has effectively commented, “The artists struggle for image is primarily his struggle for identity amongst other things, to get a cosmographic foothold to get a synoptic vision of himself in his experiential environment.  And it is this vision that gives him the right language, and gives his language in its turn, an extra personal depth and authority, or what one may call a sense of history.”

A quest in the direction of identity therefore marks the work of young Yuvaraj.  His earlier series of works are exemplary for his investigations into various materials as steel, iron, glass, wood, acrylics, copper, sheet metal etc.  A graduate of Government College of Fine Arts Chennai, Yuvaraj through his pedagogy and experimentations has arrived at his visual language that remains different and significant.

In his present oeuvre, he has translated his concepts mainly through traditional media like wood and metal subjected to new treatments and unusual combinations.  Yuvaraj’s uniqueness lies in not simply converting the natural into the manmade, rather he coerces his material to transform the common into unique; endowing it with his perception and vision to commendably produce form and volume, that makes his sculptures truly artistic.  The artist has dialogued through his material to establish a relationship between him and his work.  Hence the resultant form/image is charged with the artists’ very personal responses to his environment – whether of acceptance or resistance, anxiety or confrontation. 

The inherent duality that he presents in his work as light and dark, open and close, joy and happiness, success and failure therefore becomes an intentional strategy to underscore the element of masquerade or hypocrisy that he is explicitly concerned with. The visual language conceived to convey is simple yet powerful; avoiding any enigmatic complexities or questions and drives home the point directly.  Nearly all his sculptures are representations of the human heads, which are split into two with a metal division between them, or the heads are worked in wood and metal or he simulates the metal effect on the wood.  Further the technique of corrugating the surface of his images creating waves of pattern that play a game of hide and seek in terms of light and dark reinforces the element of hypocrisy manifesting human behaviour gesturing towards a lack, perhaps of forthrightness or truth.  The idea is visually underpinned with juxtaposition of two profiles that independently are again three dimensional to be read as full faces further differentiated by use of colours.  The deliberated and distorted expressionist faces, is his visual language, which holds valence for Yuvaraj, enabling him to foreground his life’s experiences. 

Yuvaraj’s engagement with wood in disclosing his concept has remained a rewarding experience.  The process of working through the material was not only challenging but also cathartic.  In the sense the wood has yielded flawlessly and fluidly beneath his tools, translating and chanallizing his emotional energies, feelings and angst to create the required moods.  His dexterity and craftsmanship in handling the materials in combination and juxtaposition with paint and metal is admirable.  The art of the craft however, remains a tradition of the pedagogy of the art institution in Chennai. Yuvaraj has pushed his negotiation with the material; particularly in exploring the grains of the wood with an eye for intrinsic details revealing the artists passion in dialoguing with material.

His style and form reveal indebtedness to tradition particularly folk and tribal art of the region.  The elongated almond shaped eyes the faceted primeval nose and the shape of the head gestures towards the vernacular embeddeness. 

Nevertheless his works are not calculated to be serious in character; rather he laces it with subtle humour.  For instance Yuvaraj after winning the National Award in 2006, in one of the piece, shows himself represented small and ignorant before a disquieting distorted human face with a sapling of knowledge emerging from its head to indicate he still has a long road of experience to travel.  The diversity of textures enhances as well reiterates a ‘journey’ of feelings, emotions, angst and establishing identity.