THE SPEAKING TREE (Exhibition by Swarnjit Savi)
Savi’s art has more to do with excavation than representation. The photographer in him does not as much focuses, crops out or narrows down as scoops out. By disinterring the human images buried in the trees, he reinstates the human in nature. His effort to search for the parallels of human patterns in the texture of trees is much like that of scientist who watches a drama of pulsating organisms in what appears a mere blob of blood to the naked eye. In these photographs, Savi frames out bends, stems and crevices of trees to compose metaphors of human desire. Through the filter of his amazing inventiveness, human figures in trees emerge like sculptures out of stone. Not coincidentally, his compositions indicate an atavistic urge towards the erotic art of Khajuraho. After his view-finder excavates what can be termed as `the unconscious of the trees, the painter in him imbues it with interpretation, imposing the frames with emphatic hues in primary tones of blood red, green, indigo and yellow. His digital art helps him put a surreal skin on the frames and animate the figures so that they can best be described as digital sculptures. In Savi;s photographs, one can locate an uncanny echo of the miniature art of the 17th and 19th century, especially the Kangra one. Trees served as important props in the drama of Radha-Krishna love in these miniatures. To heighten the Sringar rasa, the artist would show two trunks of a tree coiled around each other. Savi zooms in on this stylization of miniatures to recuperate a range of emotive themes. Swaranjit Savi celebrates human body as an eternal song of love. His artistic world is a world of Leela - a celebration of body and beyond. He liberates human body ensconsed in the elucidations of love from the shackles of bigoted thought, tradition and indoctrination. He shatters the hegemony of mind over body. This is the reason why he gives faces no distinct identity. Swaranjit Savi does not resort to any pre-modern art tradition. The body in his works is not depicted in any traditional Indian styles or schools of paintings. Nor does he adopt any modernistic standards, through any international style to depict human body forms. Love is a recognition - a recognition linked with the choice of the beloved. Eroticism is that dynamic, unstable and mysterious grammar that transcends all codes and criteria of beauty and offers an introduction of the beloved person. It frees all modern and pre-modern criteria of the beauty of the beloved. * Three one man shows titled 'Desire' a series of 35 oil paintings: |
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