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Dream and Perplexity : Recent Paintings
by
IRANNA RUKUMPUR
at
Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath
(Gallery No. III)
Kumara Krupa Road, Bangalore 560 001
Tel. : 080- 2261816
November 17 to 23, 2003
10: 00 am to 7 : 00 pm
Click on the picture for
details.
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Between
Dream and Perplexity: Iranna Rukumpur's Modulations of the Figure
The naked and tonsured figure that serves Iranna Rukumpur as his key
image is compacted from many ancestries. It fuses the yogi, the
bhikshu, and the tirthankara, exemplars of transcendence drawn from
Indic culture's three major sacred traditions; in more secular key, it
also encodes references to Gauguin and Bacon, the exponents of the
Jorasanko circle, and the android martyr-saviours of science fiction.
Such intertextuality is integral to Iranna's logic of figuration,
which engages vigorously with the human body cast in situations at
once archetypal and political, suggestive of a deep archive of
ceremonial physiology but also memorialising the present. In his
current work, foetus and pharaonic demigod morph into prisoner and
refugee; the sequence of hominid evolution doubles as a scale of moral
choices. Far from remaining enclosed in a heroic Modernist isolation,
Iranna's single figure implies and even actively summons a sociality
into being.
An unmistakeably autobiographical note sounded through Iranna's works
during the late 1990s, when he developed such protagonists as the yogi
meditating among cattle, the questor traversing landscapes punctuated
by ploughshares, lamp-columns, tree-stumps, chain-hooks and phallic
horns springing from trapdoors. Updating M F Husain's 'Zameen' (1955),
Iranna substituted the master's idyllic folk-Romanticism with an
awareness of the catastrophes of ecological degradation and peasant
immiseration, the destruction of communities, environments and entire
lifeworlds by the engines of discompassionate progress. Iranna, it
must be remembered, was born in the village of Sindgi, in the
north-Karnataka district of Bijapur, in 1970; as an art student, he
moved beyond the ambit of his Lingayat farming background, going first
to Gulbarga, then to Delhi (where he now lives and works) and London.
Following in rapid succession, these shifts called up the young
artist's reserves of adaptability: they enriched his consciousness yet
surely also generated an existential unease. We may justifiably
interpret the recurrent figure that negotiates an estranged and
estranging environment in Iranna's paintings as an oblique
self-portrait: a figure that confronts obstacles and practises new
reflexes; that assumes the likeness of a child or a Bhishma-like
figure lying on a bed of springs, instead of arrows. During the late
1990s, Iranna also attended to the formal problem of establishing a
significant relationship between this compelling figure and its
ground, variously activated as a field of occupancy, illusionistic
backcloth or allegorical landscape. In defining the ground, Iranna
celebrated his Klimt-like love of pattern for itself as often as he
deployed it to rephrase the natural as a sumptuousness, the paintings
clothed in a skin of jewelled gold.
Iranna's accomplishment, in the present suite, is to extend his
investment in the figure considerably, in terms both of pictorial
inventiveness and metaphorical charge. His aims are twofold: first, to
consolidate the archetypal figure as bearer of existential crisis, and
second, to restate the relationship between this figure and a
versatile ground characterised by sensuous plenitude as well as
menace. Typically, the relationship between figure and landscape takes
the form of dream and perplexity in these new paintings. Iranna's
figure tests its limits, probing and gauging its surroundings,
measuring the possible resistance that a wall, a water surface, the
air, or a staircase might put up, wondering whether it should disturb
the world's equilibrium with movement. The protagonist of 'Pendulum',
for instance, incarnates indecision, teetering at the edge of a
springboard, hands clasped behind his back. His avatar in 'Untitled',
likewise, stands on a springboard, offering us a three-quarter
profile: he sizes up a wall striated with rich bands of red and gold,
and studded with gravity-defying teacups and saucers, their bizarre
near-realism punctured by drips of paint. Looking closely, we find
further ironies of illusionism: the painting is threaded together by
handles, loops of rope that thread in and out of the wall (or
backcloth, or ground?), casting shadows that induce an Escherian
imbalance in the viewer.
Iranna also multiplies the single figure into a dyad or a group, an
ensemble that combines labour with felicity, elaborating its shared
perplexity through the performance of cathartic dramatisations. In
'Chorus', we encounter two figures (or a self and its image?)
screaming silently, running away from a catastrophe, as bricks
explode, float and fall. This is a slow-mo echo of iconic Vietnam
images, but before we can become emotionally involved, we realise that
the entire scene is maya, a screen pegged on a clothesline, a painting
fluttering in the wind within a painting. Similarly, the format of the
rogues' gallery provides the ironic model for 'No One's Face', which
assembles a series of partially effaced portraits - the dreams of the
figure sleeping at the base of the work, or the opportunities missed
by the shadow-smeared figure climbing a flight of shallow steps.
Iranna alludes here to the enforced anonymity of the collective,
viewing society as a prison of roles prescribed by dominant but
invisible forces (he leaves it to us to identify the habitus: the
tyranny of surveillance in a command economy, or the spirit of
conformism in a mediatic consumer society). In a polity of clones,
what is the real; in a hall of mirrors, which of the reflections is
the original; where does the object end and the shadow begin?
Iranna puts the device of the shadow to salient use in this series,
using it as an illusionistic trigger but also as a tenebrous cloud of
doubt accompanying the outlined figure, casting its musculature and
purposiveness into doubt. The mysterious 'Walking on Shadow' appears
to be the vision of the figure asleep in the upper band of the
composition; its protagonist slouches, as through rain or glass, a
smear of shadow and body. For a split second, when Iranna promotes
such an illusion, the shadows render his beautifully painted and
detailed surfaces solid. Indeed, in activating the scenario, Iranna's
shadows urge us to recognise the beautifully variegated, palpably
sensuous and tapestried surface, the manner in which it generates an
erotics of friction, having been painted in acrylic on a base of
tarpaulin - a rough trucker's medium, used to wrap goods on the
long-distance coaches and trucks that link India's far-flung regions?
In Iranna's usage, such a surface marks the transcription of desire
veined with anxiety: it proposes a resolution to the perennial
antithesis between figure/self and ground/world, by dissolving their
apparent duality in a relational understanding, one that places both
in a circuit of continuous interplay. In 'Bouncer', for instance,
Iranna orchestrates an interrelation between the self-absorbed figure
bouncing on a pair of springs, and a ground detailed in a myriad
floating eyes: the figure is imbricated into the ground with a rain of
paint dribbles, its movements graphed over the ground in Muybridge-like
flickers, its foetal crouch-and-release paralleled by the tornado-like
ascension of a spiral facing it. I would tentatively describe this
pictorial resolution as a figural landscape. No semblance of the
natural, it is a trope deliberately composed from annotations: it
simulates an original that is a reality of affect, not a material
reality. In a period that has registered the ascendancy of critical
artistic strategies that unmask and dismantle, Iranna Rukumpur stands
apart by espousing an art of affirmation, of measured additive
procedure and philosophical reflection.
Ranjit Hoskote
Munich, Autumn 2003
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Biography:
IRANNA G.R.
1970: Born in Sindgi, Bijapur, Karnataka (India)
1994: M.F.A. Painting from College of Art, New Delhi
1999-2000: Artist-in-residence at Wimbledon School of Art, London
Awards
2002: K K Hebbar foundation award, for 2002.
2001: State Award from Karnataka Lalit Kala Academy, Bangalore
1997: 40th National Academy Award from Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi
1997: AIFACS Award, New Delhi, 50 years of Art in Independent India
1993: 'In Search of Talent' M.F. Hussain & Ram Kumar selection
Award by Vadhera
Art Gallery, New
Delhi
1993: Bansi Parmimu Memorial Committee, New Delhi
1993: Delhi College of Art, New Delhi
1991-1992: College of Visual Art, Gulbarga
1991-1992: All India Exhibition Mysore Dasara, Mysore
1990: 4th All India Exhibition SCZCC, Nagpore
Scholarships
1999-2000: International Scholarship from Charles Wallace India Trust,
British Council
1996-1997: National Scholarship from Ministry of H.R.D., Government of
India
1995-1996: Garhi Research Grant from Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi
Solo Shows
2002: Artist of the month, month of May, in www. saffron art.com
2001: 'The Enigma of Departure',at The British Council, Mumbai, &
The Guild Art
Gallery Mumbai, essay
by Girish Shahney.
2000: Gallery Espace, New Delhi
2000: Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture, Cairo, organized by
Indian Embassy in
Cairo.
2000: Foyer Gallery, Wimbledon School of Art, London
1999: 'In the Shadow of Buddha' at Gallery Martini, Hong Kong
1998: 'Shadows of the Real' at Shridharani & Gallery Espace, New
Delhi, essay by
Roobina Karode.
1995: 'Edge Dynamics' at Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi & Jehangir
Art Gallery, Mumbai.
Essay by
Suneet Chopra.
1992: College of Visual Art, Gulbarga
Group Shows
2003: Group show curated by Ashna Singhal at Visual Art gallery, India
Habitat Centre,
New Delhi.
2002: Online Auction by www.saffron art.com.
2002: 'European & Modern &Contemporary Indian paintings'
Auction cum Exhibition by
Bowrings Fine Art
Auctioneers at New Delhi.
2002: 'Modern &Contemporary Indian paintings' Auction cum
Exhibition byBowrings
Fine Art Auctioneers at Mumbai.
1998 to 2002: Harmony Show curated by Vikran Sethi, at Nehru Centre,
Mumbai.
2002: "Words and Images"curated by Girish shahney at
National gallery of modern art,
Mumbai.
2002: Jahangir Art gallery golden jubilee show curated by Anupa Mehta,
Mumbai.
2002: 'Palette 2002'curated by Rohit Gandhi at visual Art gallery,
India habitat center,
New Delhi
2001: 'The Human factor', curated by Girish Shahney at the guild art
gallery,Mumbai.
2001: 'Palette 2001'curated by Rohit Gandhi at visual Art Gallery,
India habitat Center,
New Delhi.
2001: 'Engendering-images of women' at Guild art Gallery, Mumbai,
essay
by Sasha Altaf.
2001: 'Kaleidoscope' ISU International Art Gallery Singapore,
2001: Apparao Galleries, Madras
2000: 'Black & White' at Art Today, New Delhi
1999: 'Edge of the Century' by Amit mukhopadhyay, Delhi.
1999: 'The Creative Process', by Guild art galley in Mumbai, essay by
Shivji Paniker.
1999: 'Icons of the Millennium' at Gallery Lakeeren, Mumbai
1998: The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai
1998: Vedanta Art Gallery, Chicago, U.S.A.
1998: Gallery Espace, New Delhi
1997: 'Four Artists, Diverse Talents' at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai
organized by
The Guild art
Gallery, Mumbai.
1995: Schoo's Gallery, Amsterdam, Holland
1994: Shridharani Art Gallery, New Delhi
1994: Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai
1992: Award Winners Exhibition SCZCC Nagpore, at Bangalore, Indore,
Hyderabad,
Pune
1990: Chitra Kala Parishad, Bangalore (Also participated in many other
national
and international exhibitions)
Camps
1997: 9th Triennial India 1997 International Artist Camp by Lalit Kala
Academy,
New Delhi
1993: International Painting & Sculpture Symposium, Gulbarga
Attended numerous
camps at
the national level throughout India.
Collections
National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal.
Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi. Personal collections at Mumbai, Delhi,
Hong Kong, Germany, Holland, Austria, Croatia and Chester Herwitz in
U.S.A. |
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