Transgress features five young artists Vishnu Sasi, Clement Raj, JibinBabu, Mani K Ayyappan, and Rishi Sasi. These five artists are connected by the common environment where they work as artists assisting Ganesh Selvaraj. The inspiration they draw from their Mentor is very visible in their works and made me interested in their works and engage with them with the questions of What, Why and How? This questioning arises from the inquiry as an art educator and while observing the process of art-making among my students and artists, constantly interfering and checking on their reasonability.
I find it quite common that the ideas incepted with the work of art tend to get muted to a non-existential surface. As a practitioner of art I would like to see experiments happening, and find no wrong in schoolings. The ideas of individualism and styles do not exist by themselves in art, but are frameworks created by the writing around art. These young artists wish to be recognized, with all the dilemmas of a beginner. The structure of theory and ’ism’ don't sit well on them but wither on their own.
Curated by Sujeeth Kumar SreeKandan
Sujeeth Kumar SreeKandan(curator)
Sujeeth Kumar SreeKandan completed his BFA in 2008 and MFA in 2010 at Government College of Fine Arts, Chennai. His artworks is inspired by his perception of landscapes he lives in and travels through, with memories and past thoughts framing future ideas. He lives and works in Chennai.
Clement Raj is invested in understanding the evolution of art over the years and he believes that has happened with the materials being used to make artwork; a change in the material can be caused only by an artist and this will, in turn, affect the quality of the material. He is working towards highlighting the changes art has gone through with experimentation and trying to bring those in his artworks. Charcoal is the medium he used to work and explore the possibilities. Clement is a person who likes to travel in the quest for something new and conveys it with childlike curiosity.
Mani K Ayyappan questions the viewers to reflect on the self. The work intends to create the potential to believe everything in this universe is an illusion. For him, an artist has to be a human full of compassion for all the creatures. His technique is simple, but the concept keeps the momentum high. Ayyappan experiments with the man who does not react (Prathishetha sheshi illatha manushyan). His works show people who do not know how to react. He also understands the fact that if he does not do it nothing is going to happen.
Vishnu Sasi approaches his artworks without much pre-planning opening up to new experiences. He brings together the impact that time and space have on creation. Vishnu’s thoughts and ideas lead to reconstruction creation are the creatures of this time on his canvases. His practice aims at breaking the horror of contingency and has a constant quest for something new. He experiments with found objects and materials. He believes nothing is new but an eventual continuation from a process of existence and reconstructing. By expressing he is being responsible, fulfilling duties and trying to find answers by practicing art. Vishnu says trying gives new openings, learnings, and knowledge.
Jibin Babu depicts his loneliness, the ants which disturbed him and his dreams. He tries to escape from the thoughts which deprive him of loneliness as he likes to be left alone. He admires the translucence of the color mixing with water. Jibin finds metaphors in his liking loneliness and ants which keeps disturbing him. He is riled by the differentiation he sees around in society. He likes to be left alone and transfer his feelings and emotions on to his medium. He uses wood varnish to spread the color and allows them time to bring in the results just as his emotions are given time when alone. Jibin avoids the crowd to make time for himself and also to overcome the fear of being ignored. Ants became the elements of his artwork from the dreams he had as a child after listening to his grandparent's stories and their belief in Hanuman. Once he dreamt of hanuman tickling him with the tail and when his mother woke him up, he had ants all over his body. Thus, ants started co-existing with him. Though initially, he tried ways to avoid them, eventually he started to work with ants. His surrealistic dreams with extremely huge objects or ants paved the way for creating ants with metal wires to make them feel stronger in his works.
Rishi Sasi’s works play around with contradictions, the looming darkness and the carefree attitude about the political instability that is manifest in KTN Kottoor ( a fictional protagonist in the novel by TP Rajeevan, a Malayalam novelist). He is amused by some of the concerns and the baseless individualism, and this reflects in his works. His artworks are a culmination of three different stages, a problem (maybe political or personal), thought process and solutions. Rishi is fascinated by the differences between the people he meets at his college and at the studio he works. He implies the idea of the sense of touch, smell, and hearing to articulate his idea into a visual metaphor of his contradictions between the paradigms of time, thoughts, and experiences. He thinks that thought is what decides the medium of his work. He believes that a situation can only be fully or unambiguously present after a large number of factors and actions have taken place. Rishi believes his current circumstances are the byproduct of these contradictions, and an experiment to put together these works to make a conversation between him and the viewers.