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| Sunday, 9 May 2004 |
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The colour of stone An exhibition of Druvinka's paintings opens at the Barefoot Gallery on May 11 and continues till May 23.
Duruvinka's most recent paintings imitate the colour of the rocky outcroppings of the mountains on the approach to Mysore City. To my thinking, these works fall into two broad categories: those prophetic of "a death foretold" and those of hope and renewal and a brave new world for humans on this planet. We are now threatened with superpower nuclear weapons both on earth and, in the near future, even in outer space. In other words, we are now confronted with what might be called (to use the title of a new book by Sri Lankan Law Professor, Christopher Weeramantry) Armageddon or Brave New World. At this exhibition we will see, amongst others, two large canvasses that set the tone of the whole exhibition, incorporating Indian (both Hindu and Buddhist) ideas mainly of cosmology in mandala-like designs with bindoos, black holes, expanding universes, nuclear fission, and many other examples of creation and destruction.
The unusual textures and tonal qualities of all these canvasses have been achieved with the artist's experimentations with Nepalese bamboo paper pressed onto canvas and then painted with oil colours and tempera. It is from these "milky oceans" of Druvinka's background painting that, as always, her subject matter takes shape and emerges from dreamlike subconscious levels. She has admitted to me personally that in recent years when she is at work on a painting she reaches a trance-like state in which the ever-present socio-political content surfaces, she has now become a painter with a universal vision sans frontiers. She is again exhibiting in a gallery that is a converted home, this time in Mysore City. Her first was in the Barefoot Gallery in Colombo, Sri Lanka. These galleries in converted homes, unlike the "white boxes" of the standard exhibition space, allow an artist or curator to freely create the scenes and vistas where the resonances of the painting can be assimilated together or one by one. State-owned public galleries and those belonging to rich foundations are another matter altogether. Finally, to end this brief introduction to Druvinka's art, a paraphrase of two lines of one of John Donne's Elegies seems most appropriate. Her art is like "women, forced unto none, open to all searchers, unprized, if unknown." S.B. Dissanayake - (Written in Mysore, India) ###### Music for healing Perhaps they could be the oriental counterpart to the soothing miscellany of some of the Western classical maestros. Soft, slow. Drifting the listener to a different plane of consciousness. Promising to remove all traces of depression and stress and assisting individuals to gain sound sleep Dr. Rishi Kendra from India has introduced a series of CDs with 'spiritual healing sounds.' Music or 'nada' therapy, though new to the Western world, has been used for centuries by people from various traditions and cultures. Music has a tremendous effect on one's psychology and certain kinds of music resounds powerfully in the human spirit, so we can listen to them anywhere and everywhere. The ragas have a de-stressing effect and provide immense relief within 10 minutes of listening, claims the leaflet issued with the CDs. However, the effect of music on the human mind has been given much attention globally during the past three decades. Music certainly affects human moods. Background music is used in workplaces, hospitals, shopping malls and even in some schools in the USA. Not only is music used as a relaxation technique but as an advertising technique as well. Further more, research has found that certain kinds of music listened to by mothers increases brain power of the foetus, and pregnant mothers are encouraged to play soft music. The three CDs, Neethra for sound sleep, Kathera to alleviate depression and Saranga to reduce stress are a collection of different ragas which enhances harmony of the mind and creates an atmosphere of peace and quiet. Listening to the CDs, one finds that both Kathera and Saranga take the listener step by step towards tranquillity, from a more quick and fast phase perhaps which the listener finds prevailing in his/her mind. Neethra, on the other hand uses more relaxing ragas bringing in quiescence. All three CDs focus on the rhythm, and the tabla is used excessively on Kathera and Saranga while Neethra depends on the more mellow cadences of the sitar and 'jala taranga.' All in all, the three CDs are good news for the lovers of oriental music, those who enjoy the beat of the tabla and the melody of the sitar. (VF) ###### Dreams of order and abandon An exhibition of Rahju's paintscapes will be on view at the finomenal Space Gallery from May 14 to June 14.
This characteristic alone should qualify the present series affinity with musical composition, especially music making in the Orient in general, and more particularly in India today, where a raga, for instance, is a pattern of notes used as a basis for improvisation.
We always like to imagine alternative ways of seeing to force everyday life out of its contingency and the quotidian. Has Rahju succeeded in doing this? My answer is yes! Rahju's haunting abstractions with their shimmering colour fields made up of transparent layers of intersecting and overlapping brush strokes, as well as this artist's tendency in this series, to cluster colours and brushstrokes at the center of the canvas, to create centralised slashes of colours, that becomes bolder and bolder, sometimes even illuminating the entire canvas in a halo, or a partially shaded penumbra of light....Surely this is the closest thing we can have of a cosmic experience in a painting. Walter Pater, the English essayist and critic said: "All art aspires to the condition of music". Rahju, in these paintings, has reached that goal most admirably, I think. Having known Rahju for two decades now, I am accustomed to the idea that Rahju is an artist who moves at will between the erstwhile alternatives of figurative and abstract art most naturally and so easily and with such elan. .- S. B. D. |
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This
is her seventh exhibition.
Of
the two large canvasses, one shows in a kind of telescopic or tunnel
vision what one might call absent Buddhas of this kalpa or eon. The other
is about the creative and re-creative or the generative and re-generative
power symbolized in the idea of the sivalingam. Both are optimistic of a
"brave new world" for mankind.
Rahju,
as always exploring new subjects, ever thoughtful and sophisticated, has
created a new series of paintings that could be broadly categorised as
"abstract art". That is to the extent that the artist in this
series exploits chance effects, perhaps in conformity with Henri Bergson,
who claimed that "form is only a snapshot view of transition".
These
painting of Rahju also seem to follow closely a Paul Klee rubric:
"Art does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible" - if
music can be made visible, it is certainly here, here in these paintings
at this exhibition. If art is born when our dreams of order and abandon
come together, Rahju has in this series drawn his inspiration from both
these human qualities. New 'experimental" works of art do not blare
out their message at the blink of an eye. They require total immersion -
Ideally; these paintings should be treated as, for example, Icons, Tantric
Yantras or Mandalas. In other words, as "reveleteures".
