A Sridhar Murthy’s Liminal Lands evokes a feeling of exploring something in depth, as if digging into memories and through dreams of lived decades, says Saraswathy K Bhattathiri
Art educationist and Professor at the College of Fine Arts, Bengaluru, Dr A. Sridhar Murthy considers his practice as a self-exploratory journey where his mind churns between various visuals and thoughts from his life. The esteemed artist, who was born in Koppal, Karnataka in 1965, and pursued arts as he was “poor in general studies,” says his artworks evoke a feeling of exploring something in depth, as if digging into memories and through dreams of lived decades and condensing them to picture planes often focusing on concepts of sublime. His solo show ‘Liminal Lands’ held recently at the Art Houz Gallery, Bengaluru, comprising 30 watercolour works of varying sizes that have been done over a period of two years, connects to the artist’s self-introspective thoughts on a groundless life almost uprooted and disturbed floating without a destination or gravity, which veils with his self-proclaimed automatism. His works reflect on his poetic attitudes towards life and his immediate surroundings. Apart from frequent display of imaginary landscapes, few elements like stones, pillars, rocks, semi architectures and abstract particles seem to repeat in different frames. We also come across objects connected to religious customs juxtaposed with them. In spite of being objects of mass/ volume, these organic and inorganic objects float across the frame, at times seemingly coming out of the frame. The repetition of these objects/ structures doesn’t come with the attitude of symbolising them, in fact, it appears to de-contextualize from its earlier ritualised symbolisms. The objects/structures in them comes from various categories of knowledge like science, art, religion, geography etc. While the monolithic independent shafts remind of its types in history (its historical connections with demarcation and territory) they essentially call for a surreal sensation and an absence of gravity in most of them; visual, epistemological and ontological. Works like The Sound and the storm, The Pillar and the Passage aids in recalling various cinematic sequences of explosion and occasionally reminds of the big bang visualisation with its unusual landscape, sense of motion, scattered rocks and objects and the unusual shadows which denotes uncertainty of time like that of surrealism. The shift from Salagrama (earliest and pre-iconographic object) to bells and conch shells while referring to historic evolution of Hindu iconographic readings, also brings interventions of a journey from essence to symbolic object culture which in -turn reduces objects of symbolism to utilitarianism. The Golden Egg/Hiranyagarbha ensures this dialogue is rooted in certain Indian philosophical traditions addressing cosmos such as the Rigveda. “Then was not non-existence, nor existence. There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it. What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping was there then cosmic water, in the depths of the unfathomed?” – Nasadiya Sookta, Rigveda.
While there is a possibility of rightly fitting his works to this hymn, it also compels us to contemplate on how and why are occult and Vedic references, especially from modern art, is something frequently deployed to deliberately or intentionally connect to abstraction in both philosophy and art.
Being a printmaker, he tends to retain the monochromatic appeal of the works in watercolour, too, which gives an unusual visual effect. Some have control over the brush and in others letting the paint flow down to create textures and effects in the picture plane. The visual effects of all images display oscillation between a sensation of stillness and movement almost like animation. Besides the metaphysical attributes behind these works one can also connect to a fabricated id and superego on the representational plane. They also reflect on Murthy’s love for travelling (metaphysical and physical) through moving landscapes, speed, wind and void. Despite a creative visual take on metaphysics and philosophy, he maintains his modernist attitudes of refuting to articulate on his compositional or ideational prerequisites while being conveniently unreserved about spectator’s inputs. Nevertheless, Murthy’s multi-perspective, monochromatic artworks evoke a self-proclaimed automatism, which is permitted by the ascetics of modernism. He effortlessly brings in the technical effects and retains a link with each frame. These works efficiently disclose the artist’s ethnocentric psyche as well as stress on a profound sense of abstraction and cognitive ambiguity which coincides with the Vedic hymns. Liminal Lands with its surrealist attitudes and him being an art educator, takes us on a plane of discourse on art today, psychic effects and questions of articulation, ideation and vocabulary in an ever changing zeitgeist of time and space.
Murthy completed his BFA from the College of Fine Arts (CKP), Bengaluru, and MFA in printmaking from MSU Baroda, and PhD from Mysore University. He has been part of several group, solo shows and art fairs in India and abroad and also part of various national and international workshops, seminars and camps.
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