Feature

The Rhythmic Essence

Veteran artist Jeram Patel has come out with a set of steel and wood sculptures after a long gap of forty years. Baroda based gallery, Art Home presents these works in a show titled ‘Untitled’ at the Sridharani Gallery, Delhi. JohnyML features the artist and the works.

“I don’t like narratives. There is narration in human life. Aesthetically speaking, I find it more interesting to capture the essence of the narratives than narrating things in detail. I condense them, I go to the essence and this comes as various forms in my works,” says veteran artist Jeram Patel. Behind him his two moderately large drawings hang on the wall. The black and blue patches look thick liquids against a white surface. The more you look at it the more you realize the meaning of his comment. You see the essence of the narrative- the flux, the sediments and the sap of life.

Jeram Patel has always been a loner in his art and even in his life too. He likes to be alone. And he believes that loneliness is a form of creative act. All his works, especially the wood and steel works that he has created for the recent show ‘Untitled’ come from the depth of his loneliness. The forms and shapes that are carved in and out of the ply-boards at times look like aerial views of a forgotten landscape. At times they look like geometrical forms and in some of the works they look clearly the male and female entities. The shapes are in tune with each other, creating a sense of vibration and rhythm within the sculptural formats.

The features of landscapes, though Jeram Patel would not like to give emphasis on them, are keys to his works. The inner layers of the ply-boards, in skillful carving attain new meanings. A patch of color here or a patch of solidified fevicol there, actually imparts them with the qualities of a real landscapes. He uses blow torch to burn certain places to give accentuation to the depth. These charred areas add to the sense of landscapes seen from a bird’s eye view. “I used to travel a lot just to see the landscapes. I just open myself up to the sceneries and images occur in me. I never translated these landscapes into paintings or sculptures. But the sense has always prevailed in the works,” says the artist.

When he was young and also when he was teaching at the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda (he taught there for twenty five years), he used to take a bus from Baroda and travel up to Ahmedabad during the rainy days- just to see the landscapes on the either sides of the road. “The yellow mustard flowers, the green leaves washed clean in the monsoon showers used to look great. I traveled up and down only to absorb the feel of these colors. I did not see anything else than the rain washed landscapes,” Jeram Patel ruminates.

Jeram Patel has a clear affinity for forms and shapes, whether they are geometric or irregular. May be his formal education in Sir J J School of Arts in Bombay had initiated him into the aesthetics of abstract visual language. Later he was educated in London for two years where he found resonances of his art with the art of the international masters. “J.J.School has influenced my thinking. But my intention was not to follow any school of thinking. I did not want to follow any particular philosophy or school of thought. I was more inclined to free visual thinking,” he asserts.

Sculpture happened to him in 1960s. “It was a kind of revelation for me,” he remembers. He found the qualities of ply board and he learned how they could be carved into different forms. “This material and method responded well to my aesthetics. I liked doing it. When I was doing it, none was doing similar sculptures or using similar materials in India.” But what was the kind of response he got at that point of time? “People were curious and they watched my works very carefully. As I said, I am a loner and I did not fall into any particular school.” A contemporary of Souza and Raza, Jeram Patel carved his own niche in the art scene by clinging on to his lonely working style.

Jeram Patel almost left the making of sculptures by the end of 1960s. He turned more into mono-chromatic drawings. It was in first decade of the new millennium, Jeram Patel decided to come back to his experiments with the medium of sculpture. However, his coming back proves to be more interesting as he has used different mediums including steel along with his favorite medium of plywood. “Physical limitations were not allowing me to indulge in making sculptures. I wanted to do mixed media sculptures. I even wanted to pour melting steel on to my sculptures. But my health was not allowing me to do all those experiments. Then Asit Shah came to my life and he told me that he could fabricate the works as per my ideas. I believe, he has done a good job for me,” opines Jeram Patel on his new works.

The new suite of works has got steel plate covered surfaces. The plywood is carved with imagination and precision. Jeram Patel’s all works are ‘untitled’. “All human beings are untitled. Title is a temporary thing. No body can cling on to it. The human essence is abstract and it does not have any title. I have never titled my works for this reason. May be now they got a title ‘untitled’”, chuckles the artist. Jeram Patel spends his time watching television and he says he does not see any ‘programs’. “I like the moving images and the movement is what excites me. And my works carry that forces of inner movements.”

Manju's Corner

The Rhythmic Essence

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