Hop into world of abstract surrealism

An exotic exhibition will take its viewers on a poetic journey into the creations of C. Douglas, an artist whose visuals have the capacity to be imagined as a reality with the unknown and the fragmented.

‘Rose Red Rose Invisible, Visible in My Blood’ will offer a visual ride while simultaneously asking them to look beyond the narrative of the subject.

Born in 1951 in Kerala, Douglas is one of the last remaining artists in Cholamandal Artists’ Village. Twenty years later, in 1971, he took admission at Government College of Arts, Madras. After the initiation of the Cholamandal Artists’ Village with thirty other artists, Douglas began spending his weekends there and came in contact with K Ramanujam, his senior in college.

Over the years, his friendship with Ramanujam deeply inspired and influenced his own practice. Ramanujam`s ability to create a fantastic world with the play of lines and patterns fascinated the budding artist within Douglas. However, Ramanujam’s death in 1973, followed by Douglas’ shifting out of the village to Germany and then back to the village, left a painful residue that is evident in his works of that period.

It was in Germany that he was exposed to the genre of abstract surrealism. After his return from Germany in 1985, he turned to figurative abstractions, and his works speak volumes about modernist poetry. He worked with paper, cloth, and tea stains, often walking on the paper and crumpling it in order to create a surface of his own.

The influence of books and literature in his practice takes shape in the form of words and texts of the subject matter.

Taking its name from the inscription in a series of artwork, the exhibition ‘Rose Red Rose Invisible, Visible in My Blood’ highlights Douglas’ practice from 1990 – 2022.

The exhibition is a survey of more than three decades of the artist’s practice and his use of poetry as a visual language.

When: 23 August – 7 October 2022
Where: D 43, Block D, Defence Colony, New Delhi, Delhi 110024

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