Reji KP
Reji KP |
In Reji’s works most of the people are seen walking. Or they are doing something else. These animated figures do not sport any kind of verisimilitude with the actual figures. Some of them look like characters from story books and some of them are expressed using graphic contours. However, they all have a sense of purpose; redeeming themselves from the situations which they are forced to live in. Most of them are workers and they work towards the celebration of their existence.
Though some art critics have cited that Reji works with a working class and left politics oriented ideology in mind, it does not seem that the artist is too political in these concerns. He does not stand for any particular political ideology. If at he feels to uphold some kind of ideology or philosophy in his works, it is the ideology and philosophy of humanism. He is a humanist to the core. And his works express his empathy with the people who work. Reji likes his protagonists to be animated than being lethargic. This belief in animated life imparts a special dynamism to his works.
Reji is a painter of the immediate. He looks around him and finds simple proceedings of life. Like a faithful chronicler of events, obviously filtered through his eyes, he captures them and transforms them into visual codes. There is a condensed narrative in all his works. Even while painting the immediate, he tries to raise them from the level of the quotidian. They don’t aspire for the universal. But there is always an aspiration from the artist’s part to make his local images to address universal issues from the limited locations. Reji points out that when he paints a water tank seen through his window that need not necessarily be addressing the water politics of the world. But he is not averse to the idea that it could also be interpreted in those ways.
Baroda is the location from where Reji finds his images. He studied his graduation and post graduation in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.University, Baroda. Though he likes to work on paper, of late he has started painting on canvas. Besides he works on certain conceptual sculptures using glass as his medium. His works are in major collections in India and abroad.
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