As the pandemic continues to affect normal life, works of three artists documenting the trials and tribulations faced by people are being  displayed at Gallery1000A

Artists have been standing at the forefront in expressing their anguish and have often foretold the aftermath of man-made devastations for a long time now. Sharing a common thread in their approach in expressing how Covid -19 affects personal life as well as the life around them, three artists have come together for a show titled ‘Journey Beyond’.

Featuring works of Sanu Ramakrishnan, Uma Shankar Pathak and RS Babu, the works also remind us to overcome with the spirit of togetherness.

For Kerala based artist R S Babu, the most prominent element in his paintings is time. “Increasingly Babu’s paintings become for me an exploration into the politics of ‘decay’ and ‘nothingness’, capturing a decay that is setting into India’s modernist history as the aesthetics of neo-liberalisation and globalisation is taking over the country,” art critic Rahul Bhattacharya observes.

Whereas artist Uma Shankar Pathak deals with the theme of contrast between the rural struggles of survival and urban desire for abundance in his canvases. His rural abridging and eventual migration to a big city made him experience personally, the complexity it carries. The recent unforgettable tragic events that took place on Indian roads of a massive exodus of migrant workers to their native homes made an impact in his hope and dreams, a sphere where only darkness prevails now.

“Here I quote ‘nothing in everything’, to emphasise the very nature of man’s vast expectation that he runs after everything, and when he gets everything, he is satisfied by nothing. As an artist, I took this as a subject in revealing my artistic emotions, for the reason that I am also a man of blood and flesh like every other individual,” explains Pathak.

Sanu V Ramakrishnan, who is proficient in both painting and sculpting, directly expresses his dismay on the present state of affairs with a minimal pallet of monochrome hues and figuration in stipulated lines.

“Images of human kindness, messages of sacrifice, star-studded nightmares and intense thoughts of spouses are the subjects of these exhibits. These images may create a different level of beauty when poverty, lust and tragedy collide with the necessities of life. These works capture the lives of the masses who are not considered to be the makers of time and history that have passed through it,” says Ramakrishnan.

The exhibition is on display at Gallery1000A till 30 November

(Cover image: Uma Shankar Pathak’s work titled ‘The black sun’ )