Before a work of art, an enthusiastic viewer, though he
claims to be looking for something new and strange, in fact often looks for
something familiar. Looking for familiarity is the mind’s very deliberate attempt
to derive associations that would evoke a sense of coherence and comprehension,
which would eventually lead to the understanding of a work of art. Familiarity
also sends the viewer to a comfort zone so that he could be at peace with what
he witnesses. It reassures the patterns within which one has set to lead his
life, makes negotiations with the society where he lives and also makes him feel
secure in front of someone else’s aesthetic expression. A work of art could be
disturbing at the outset, it may have some shock values and it may even
challenge the very notions about art that one holds sacred for a long time.
However, the moment one finds some kind of familiarity with the subject/image/style
one is satisfied. Dejection and rejection turn into acceptance. If you are a
buyer or an art collector, perhaps then you could look for a cheque leaf to
sign and own it. Then you say, “I want to leave with this work of art.” An art
collection basically shows the collector’s taste, true, but it also shows how
much he wants to familiarize with the strange beauties and be at peace with
them.
Pradeep Puthoor’s paintings, despite its riot of colours, at
the outset do not take the viewers to a comfort zone of familiarity. They are
large scale paintings with organic images and bone structures filling in the
space defying possible logic of symmetry and structure. However, they do not
collapse under their own weight as the more one looks at them the more one sees
the structural integrity and the compositional strength. But that is not enough
for a viewer to feel comforted or reassured in front of a work of art. The
search for familiarity should start from somewhere and often it happens from
the title, but the titles do not yield much as a title like this ‘Animal on the
Ramp’ does not show either an animal or a ramp. Instead they show organic
figures, strange flora and fauna, an underwater world feeling or an ethereal
kingdom of strange creatures. Yet, the creatures are not fully formed though
some of them have eyes popping out from here and there. Some pupa like forms
gives the expectation of transforming themselves into fully formed winged creatures
but that also does not happen here. In short, Pradeep Puthoor’s works primarily
unsettle the viewer. But the good thing about this work is that cursory glances
or visions tainted by wine do not help one to understand them. One has to stand
and stare, if need be, for a very long time. The paintings absorb the viewer. After
a long time, perhaps, a viewer is made to stand before a work of art and wonder
what it is all about.
The paintings that one sees here in this untitled show are
not abstract and they are not figurative either. Surprisingly, they are more
about painting, the very act of painting than its representational
possibilities. Each image is connected to the image next to it through an
internal logic of painting. They look like a bone structure or a nervous
system. Here the familiarity associations start. They look like anatomical
studies yet not clinical or scientific. They look like internal organs pulled
out, but without violence. They are not cross sections of heart or lungs.
However, from a distance they could fool the viewer making him think that it is
all about an internal space aesthetically externalized. Pradeep Puthoor’s
paintings are strange landscapes where brushes and colours take a walk, a very
long walk. According to the artist, the logic of the painting lies in the act
of painting, not in conjuring up images. “We live in a complex world, where
money rules and values decay. But I cannot be overtly critical of money because
money is the driving force. But the question is how money and values co-exist
without deteriorating into a vast land of dump yard where everything is in a
state of decay. I capture this world of degeneration and if you look minutely,
you could see how in this decaying world, everything transforms in a strange
way, opening up a world beyond our comprehension,” says Pradeep.
This world of slow deterioration is another matrix, exist in
real and in imagination at once, having a sort of independence as a republic
but without strict rules of governance and policing, and abundance of autonomy.
The material world and the human beings who revel in materiality provide fuel
to this transformation and they without knowing, live on a world which is
caused by themselves, which is perhaps much more interesting than the world of
malls, wide roads, heavy traffic and multiplexes and shopping complexes.
Pradeep enjoys watching this world and when he makes his mural scale works, he
almost feel the orgy of a new life existing parallel with our material world.
This is not a spiritual world that we understand in the conventional sense. It
is not an attempt to go within and beyond for the realization of the self,
releasing the hidden powers. Pradeep’s pictorial world is neither a nether
world nor a paradise. It exists right here, now as our extended existence, which
we cause but refuse to experience. When he paints that world, only in the
structure and composition, as an artist he makes certain interfering, otherwise
he lets the images grow, exactly the same way this parallel world grows right
here and now. But where does it exist actually?
As I said, this world is not in our mind, it is not in our
heart, not in our thoughts, not in our feelings, not in our passions, not in
our consumptions. But it is in our acts, at the invisible ends of our acts.
Whatever we do here and now, manifests in this invisible world. That means,
almost like a butterfly effect, our actions causes these worlds; these worlds
of beautiful decay. Pradeep, in one of his works, makes a Temple for Yellow
Bones. If one really wants to feel comfortable with that painting, one could
imagine a gothic structure with peculiar windows made of bones. But according
to the artist, these temples are made by our own gluttony; our greed to eat,
consume more and more. What we leave behind are bones and hairs that keep
looking at our lives as hieroglyphics of disaster and destruction, which
unfortunately we do not care to decipher. Hence, Pradeep makes a temple for
these bones; perhaps all historical monuments are temples for/of bones.
Eventually, as an art critic I have to be at peace with myself.
So I spend a lot of time before Pradeep’s paintings and look for familiar entry
points. I have seen the early works of Pradeep, therefore these works do not
shock me. However, I need to justify myself. Hence I start seeing Joan Miro’s
surrealist abstractions in him, later on an altered version of the Damsels of
Avignon. Then I reach a point where I could attribute any historical work to
the ones that I see in the gallery. Finally I drop that attempt because I know
that the strange eroticism of Pradeep’s work would take me even to Delacroix.
That is a futile exercise and perhaps would go against the grain of my argument
that these paintings as the invisible ends of our own making.
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