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Poems of Earth
Kochi based artist Rajan Krishnan recently exhibited his latest paintings and installations titled ‘Ore- Substances of Earth I’ at the Bodhi Space, Mumbai. JohnyML says that Rajan’s works are poetry of reality made into a virtual space. To know how and why read the essay.
Every inch of this earth is priced. Every step of ours is measured. Every space of articulations is tagged and branded. Every relationship is ideologically determined. You look out for a space to assert your existence, to rebel and to be distinct. Each triumphant possession of space soon results into a painful realization of being co-opted by the other. Nothing stays. It is not even flux. It is a chain constituted by the moments of indetermination. You know what you are doing and you know the consequences of your deeds but you remain undecided.
You know you are a part of the change yet you strive to be out of it. The more you push yourself outside these happenings the more you get trapped into the quagmire of illusions. Yes, in this grand mall of illusions you are just a shopper, first shopping for the experience of it, then experiencing for the shopping itself. Oh, illusions that once helped you to escape from the harsh realities of the society, how much you have changed! Now illusions themselves are the reality and where do you find your own reality, an escape route from illusions? Hell with you illusions. We now need reality…a whiff of pure air, a mouthful of pure water, a pat on the back, an embrace of comfort and a hearth without account books. Back to the roots! Yes, that is the solution. Back to the roots. But where are the roots?
I would say, the roots lie in poetry; the poetry of earth, the poetry of rustic gourmet, the poetry of unbridled imaginations. Switch off that mobile phone for a while and listen to the music of that wild bird. Remove the sandals from your feet and feel how sand touches your soles. That could be too much of romanticism suitable only in ghazals and melodious film songs. The poetry that kills the illusion of our times, in other words, the poetry of our times is the poetry of virtual space. Each blogger is a poet, a poet who rebels. A poet who uses his illusion to create the reality that he wants. Each painter is a poet, and each painter, I would say is a blogger in the real space of studios and galleries. They create the reality out of illusions. And they hate illusions. Hell with you illusions. In the virtual space of painting and poetry, we know how to make our realities. This reality does not produce critique on the grand mall illusions. But they help the man to go back to his roots. His virtual reality, where the mobile ring tones stop and soles get the tickling of sands.
Computer screen and a painted surface; they for me look the same. Or I experience them as one and the same. Perhaps, Rajan Krishnan, who recently presented ‘Ore-Substances of Earth I’ at Bodhi Space, Mumbai, also must be thinking in the same lines. He creates the reality of earth, an earth that has become ‘unfamiliar’ to us as we have become the lotus eaters in the grand malls of illusion. His paintings are the giant computer screens with the tones of grays, ochre, amber, ember colours. Don’t they simulate the ambience of the kill and rape experiences of the three dimensional computer games? You can navigate your passions through these images of earth, real but abandoned. You call it eerie and surreal, then you must be still eating lotus.
Rajan’s paintings are interactive virtual spaces. They don’t give what a grand mall offers you; the pleasures of becoming; becoming the brand, style and a product. They don’t make you feel like living in and off television screens and billboards. Instead, they make you free; free to interpret and experience the way you want. The question that you tend to ask while witnessing Eclogue 1 and Eclogue 2 is this: what are these structures? One looks like a Babel Tower, unfinished and abandoned. The other looks like a device for drawing water. They could be the devices through which once the human beings spoke to the earth; the poetry of building a structure to bake the clay and make the utensils; the music of the man who watered the fields and the music of water that filled the bucket and its ultimate sacrifice of becoming one with the earth. Rajan captures this poetry and music, both unfamiliar to the taste of the contemporary beings. He is the creature of a virtual reality, let me assert, devoid of its illusory catching.
This game of painting (a la the computer gaming) is interactive. The surfaces and images are identifiable at one level and on the other level they demand active participation. To actively participate in a world that has turned unfamiliar, you need to shed off all your pretensions. You need to become humble. Listen to that friend who complained about the old library shelves where 19th Century German books are stocked. You know they existed once, touched and cared by thousands of word lovers, dreamers and rebels who wanted to create their own illusions of a society. Now, they are there, but their existence nullified by time and carelessness. To read them, to understand those illusions and create your own reality, you need to shed off your pretensions. You need to ‘refresh’ yourself. You need to remove your sandals and switch off your mobile phones. Rajan’s paintings are like these books, they wait for touch or at least the caressing of fire.
Rajan’s love for earth does not come from his romantic moorings on a lost past, which always look golden in color. They come from the artist’s undefeatable desire for generating his own poetry, painting in a virtual space. Look, my dear buyer, you are buying one of the most violent poems of our times, you are buying one of the most sacrilegious games our times, you are buying a reality; a reality, where there is no cell phone rings and there are no protected feet. You are buying a reality by paying it with illusions. This grand mall of desires and illusions will eat away this virtual poetry; what a wonderful time we have! Back to roots. But where are the roots?
This painter of our times, finds the roots in his memories. His memories are vaults where the seeds of rebellion have grown into botanical wonders. They creep around the trunks of your faith, they spread and fatten their undergrowths with the gelatin of an explosive imagination, their leaves are cut but their sap is still sticky and it sticks in your hands like a reminder of your times sans mobile rings and sandals. They are bombs ticking away their time of explosion and I am sure one day, it will not be fun day, when you buy your own illusions from the grand malls, it will explode at your face, making you look like clowns. Painter, you have not lost the word and world but you have gained a realm of poetry and painting which you share with us.
Between the grand mall of illusions and the glass houses of desire, there stands the hill of terracotta figurines and you call it Ore- Substances of Earth. You have to climb the hill, perhaps you will not climb the hill, instead you will collect the hill, or you will pick up a figurine as a souvenir. You accommodate the artist’s reality at the mantelpiece of your desire house. But how good and wonderful it would be to climb up the hill without sandals on your feet and the mobiles switched off and reach your grand mall of illusion and glass house of desire. Your aching legs will tell you how rich are the realities as weighed against the illusions. But in the bitter taste of the red and white wine, even the vine imagery of the artist sinks and you chew your own words for snacks. Down there at the foot of the hill the dinner party is on, the earth stands still, air holds its breath and it is a moment of stillness and each party-hopper looks a caricature of himself or herself. Isn’t it the time to become as diminutive as the terracotta figure and become one with the hill, one with the earth? Back to roots.
There is a Wing to fly. The wings are not made of wax. They won’t melt in sunlight, let alone the gallery lights. They glitter. They are folded, corrugated metal. Metal, oh metal aren’t you the refined form of earth; the ore? You can fly towards the sun, like Icarus, but then it will not melt. Fly high my beloved birds, with the wings of metal. You can fly like Jonathan the Seagull and find one day that you have reached the heavens. What is the connecting link between the earth and heaven? Virtual reality; virtual reality created by the artist in his paintings and installations. They are wings that perhaps do not want to fly. They just be there and reach there. They can safely rest on the baked clay balls- meeting of a long lost sister and brother. Look at them, the ferociousness of the earth, metal and fire is so tamed. Water of love has quenched the thirst of fire. They are at rest. Like the male and female principles, yin and yang, purusha and prakriti, earth and metal. Listen carefully. The fire of reality is still raging in them. That is the truth of relationship, not of the grand malls, but of the brothers and sisters. Back to roots.
The tent is there again of the same corrugated metal sheets. A peeping Tom’s heaven. The artist asks you to peep into the metal house, the refined house of earth, to see how he has made the reality for you. There are several people see in the video making the Ore figurines. They are in a trance, they are not goaded by any ideology, they are playing a game; a game in the virtual reality. They are making the syllables of a poetry, which could be recited by any one. There these people are completing the unfinished project of Babel. Look at the finished projects of grand malls and glass houses of desires. They too are poetry; but poetry of illusions. Here is a poetry that creates the reality for the human being and makes him to switch off cell phone for some time and walk on the sand. You make your own tower of Babel, the jumbling of language does not affect them. It is good to listen to a poem that does not create illusions for you. It tickles you into reality. Back to roots. Rajan Krishnan is the painter of this reality that passes through the grand mall of illusions. There the dinner is over. “The silent drama of the servants who clean up the tables continues…endless…endless.”
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