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View from the Other End
Through poignant but quirky narratives Roy Thomas builds up a world of visuals where memorial images of the past and the immediate assume dominance. Shubhalakshmi Shukla analyses Roy’s solo show at Kitab Mahal, Mumbai, presented by Arushi Arts, Delhi.
A speculative relationship between human beings can be established once in childhood and the next in old age. In the mid –part of the life one has to have a pet animal to grow up with (about faithfulness) as an individual who could be capable of loving oneself as well as the world around! Roy Thomas brings about such thoughts by introducing rhythmic institutionalization of violence in his visuals.
Like a midget I walked through the show ‘View from the Other End’. Out there Roy Thomas had skillfully constructed his world around the mitigated relationship between the surface and depth. His paintings are composed of a story-like content base. Each one triggers off from a story line either in the news paper or magazine. As a self-image Roy seems to be interested in those voices which often pointedly get silenced. In his process of painting he proportionately and rationally alters these origins to allow a poetic nature. Here, on the surface a photographic quality may remain understated, however, beneath lies a text not so easily readable.
He constitutes form raindrops, a personified significance of objects that may fall out of place once in a while or forever. They are either squeezed out colour-tubes, butterflies, green-grasshoppers, fishes, onions, chess-keys, zodiac sign-emblems, or even lemon and chillies! It is interesting to note that like Magritte’s paintings these are beyond their object presence, and impersonate an abstract presence relating to the story like content base of the painting. For example, a green grasshopper is a mythical symbol for the inflow of money..!
Through the above method he also creates a special and playful relationship between human beings and animals. Probably this is a return of a splinter of childhood innocence on father’s lap who used to be violent and irrational (in his earlier paintings while making abstract-brush--strokes).
Yet beyond this relationship, there is a story within his mind about the cultural politics related to the mass-scale production of manufactured chicken or meat (still considered to be sacrilegious in certain social structures within India), the mass-scale deaths of migratory birds, the spreading of bird-flu etc. All that which could be a question to the role of animal rights activists. Global warming is another significant concern at the back of his mind which is one of the biggest threats to the lives of these birds and animals, as well as the whole of ecology. He plants “silent Viewers” a botanical toad with ‘english-medicine’ as rainfall exactly in the centre of the canvas. Roy is hitting the stinging paradox during the time of global warming, that the imagined cure through this process is through the increase in body-heat.
Strangely, a cat that plays with its enemy till its death.. It is said so about mythical nature of certain human beings as well!! This creature happens to appear only once in the whole exhibition. “With Unexpected Playmates” shows a group of school-girls desiring to play with the moon, which is probably the left over image of the ball, actually held by the cat on the ground. Quite an irony that the moon is surrounded by gold-fishes in the sky! The helicopter flies at farther end in this composition, and the same is with held in a glass jar like a fish in “Warring Soldiers”. A small girl in her pink frock holds it behind the soldiers moving in opposite direction, where more darkish sea water splashes at the farther end. In a cherishing manner Roy is trying to depict war and the innocence on the same plane, where as the silent question about war becoming the biggest demonstration of the economy seems to remain silent ( “View from the other End”-II).
“Baby with Chillies” and “ with mallice towards none” seems to be rhythmic substitute towards violence. The story about elephants goes as follows in the native land- Kerala. Elephants are important commodity on any festive occasion here and there are specific religious institutions to fund their livelihood. Yet, during festive occasion their transportation from one place to another or even during the performance at eventful occasions their comfort level is not so carefully handled. This particular painting is based on the incident when an angry elephant gets killed by his own master, and later got into strangling the crowd along with other elephants. This angst-ridden episode itself was enough for me to get walking up and down like a midget in the gallery space who had little clue about one’s own native sources..
Roy is born and brought up in Kerala in Kottayam; and has been painting from Delhi for the last fifteen years. He has been a committed student of painting and has post-graduated form the Delhi College of Fine arts. He has participated in many solo and group shows and is recipient of recognized scholarships and fellowships for art. |
