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Of fantasy, escape and the everyday

Curator and writer Jasmine Shah Varma in an introductory essay written for the forthcoming show at the R&L Fine Arts, New York analyzes the works of five young contemporary artists from India.

This collection is a slice of art from India's diverse contemporary art practices and approaches to painting. The Indian art scene is in exciting times. A range of approaches to making art are concurrently seen here. There are dominant trends in art making and there are those which are going on a unique level. This quintet includes artists who have been working for the last five to ten years. Through these years they have evolved a personalised visual idiom. While the visual media is a source for thought and image reference for many of the other Indian artists, stylistically each artist in this show provides strikingly fresh perspective with innovative language.

In spite of the different backgrounds and points of departure that each artist comes from in this show, it's interesting to see a confluence of thoughts in this collection. Shruti Nelson and Kim Kyoungae release themselves into a fictional world with traces of the real in it. Gayatri paints in the mode of creating photo-likeness but takes the elements to construct a scene that's dreamlike. She uses the idiom to broadly address her concern for nature. Alok responds to the situation where he finds himself in narrowing green spaces. Sharmi deals with the real world by creating a dramatic platform for her characters to play out the experiences she observes or undergoes.

Kyoungae and Gayatri are of non-Indian origin. Kyoungae came to India for further studies and did Masters in Museology at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda. Gayatri came here as a tourist and stayed on to pursue a career as an artist. With her husband Ananda Surya she was involved in environmental campaigns in South India.  Both Gayatri and Kyoungae have assimilated their roots and influences from the home country with the experiences of their current situation. In that sense they are global artists based in India sharing the same space as many Indian artists. By contrast Shruti has always lived in Baroda. But her imagery of a fantastical land and creatures crosses regional boundaries. Alok and Sharmi have developed an idiom that is embedded in Indianness; they paint issues that don't have a fixed address, they are universally relevant ideas.

Alok's passion besides painting is playing football and being in nature. Both activities take him away from the noise and crowd of the city and help him unwind and be one with himself. These are his most cherished moments. In his paintings Alok records his daily experiences. At times he paints the cement landscape without a spot of greenery he sees from his studio. In this exhibition the two paintings suggest that the only green areas in the city are also being compromised. Alok enlarges ordinary sequences of everyday that concern him to highlight on issues of erosion of environment and the attitude of considering nature secondary to haphazard expansion of cities. He finds an aesthetic balance between the ugly, dull grey cement water reservoirs with the lush velvety green grass. He observes how the bird's innocence and grace is marred by a missing leg.

The broad context of Gayatri's work revolves around nature and the co-existence of human and other beings on earth. Her work, especially in this exhibition, is poetic and set in an imaginary situation. In Rajni's Dream a young girl is seen transported to a great height seated on the back of a giraffe with a desirable view of blue sky. This finely painted, meditative work gets one contemplating just like the painted girl seems to be doing. It's not very often that in our busy schedules in metros that we take a deep breath and sit aside to observe the passing time and Gayatri seems to make that point or give us an opportunity to do so. Gayatri and her Indian family lived in the busy town of Kochi before they decided to move to the spiritual, quiet town Thiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu. Through her paintings we can see her desire to slow down the pace of life and be in a beautiful moment amidst nature.

Kyoungae's idyllic compositions are a flight into a fantastical world. Thin, multiple layers of colours and the glowing effect urge you to you to see the now-you-see-now-you-don't imagery. She paints a dreamy, surreal world that is an escape to a faraway place. She paints few but minutely detailed elements to create an engrossing tapestry that holds personal stories. Memories from the past and longing to be someplace else are painted in these works. Kyoungae has settled in India for many years and has family here yet being a foreigner adjustments have to be made on a daily basis and for her painting is the medium to bridge the gap between the two worlds. To the viewer her painting is a free ride to an indescribable destination of fantasy.

Shruti weaves an imaginary world using bird and animal forms that amalgamate in the dark. There's a sense of mystery in the enveloping darkness. She enters this secret world covered in shadows. Her paintings capture the movement of a flighty bird swooping down or a lion that is about to spring upon its prey. The quiet, graceful walk of black bucks, antelopes and deer, the sparkling eyes that flash in the dark, the gathering of a specie near the watering hole are part of the dramatic scene.

Shruti's concerns are not as much about providing a storyline as to give the viewer the feel of the characters and to create the ambience of the location where her imaginary scene is playing. They are not premeditated canvases. Things happen spontaneously in the framework of the scene in her process intensive works.

Sharmi Chowdhury has studied at both Shantiniketan and Baroda schools of art and her work is in the narrative tradition. While she works on a scale of typically five or six feet, she applies the logic of Indian miniature panting in laying out the composition. However instead of a linear narrative she juxtaposes scenes located variously to present her story. She uses curtains in every composition to create a theatrical opening to her scenes as if suggesting life is a stage and all are actors playing roles. In her rendition she paints how individual roles and nature of relationships are changing using the animal form as metaphor.  In 'Coffee House' she has created the scene of a laidback Kolkata coffee house with a simultaneous scene from a zoo featuring domesticated wild animals in cages. The unusual and the contradictory are shown as quotidian in her work.

Going against the grain of slick imagery and methodical compositions seen widely in India's emerging artists, Sharmi holds her ground with naïve figuration. In their own ways Shruti and Kyoungae have developed individual ways of handling form. While Kyoungae carries over her training in South Korean Oriental Painting in her contemporary idiom, Shruti's background in Zoology prior to Fine Arts feeds her basic inspiration. Alok and Gayatri have an idiom independent from the au courant photo-like symbolic reproduction of visuals. The artists paint about widely relevant issues from a personal viewpoint rather than a generic social or political stand. This collection celebrates the diversity in approach to painting currently seen in contemporary Indian art.