Riyas Komu

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Born in 1971, Riyas Komu graduated with Painting as his specialization and has since than extended himself to sculpture, photography and video installations. He is also a recipient of K.K. Hebbar Foundation Scholarship and Bombay Art Society Award, 1996 and Maharashtra State Art Prize 1995. Komu was a participant in the 52nd Venice Biennale 2007 curated by Robert Storr. His other prominent museum shows include Paris-Delhi-Bombay, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Crossroads India Escalate at Prague Biennale 5. Other prominent museum shows include Concurrent India, Helsinki Art Museum Tennis Palace, Finland; Indian Highway, Museum  of contemporary Art, Lyon; Herning Kunstmuseum, Herning, Denmark; India Awakens: Under the Banyan Tree, Essl Museum, Austria; Finding India, Art for the New Century, Museum of Contemporary Art; Milan Museum show, curated by Daniella Polizolli and India Contemporary, GEM, Museum of Contemporary Art, Hague; India Now: Contemporary Indian Art Between Continuity and Transformation, Provincia di Milano, Milan, Italy, India Xianzai: Contemporary Indian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Shanghai; Modern India, organized by Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM) and Casa Asia, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture at Valencia, Spain. His recent solo shows include Oil's Well, Let's Play!, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan; Subrato to Cesar, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai in association with The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai and Safe to Light, Azad Art Gallery, Tehran.

Riyas Komu says that his work draws from the public domain. His subjects are charged with significance bringing about a disturbance depicting an element of political disquiet. For Riyas, art is a medium for social comment on the situations the world is facing today.” Komu deploys portraiture, also, to register a cryptic side or oblique remark on contemporary culture. Riyas Komu’s recent paintings and sculptures propose a bold re-formatting of the genre of portraiture. Komu’s portraits are close-up shots of nameless and dispossessed individuals redeemed, visually if not materially, from the flux of life at the margins of globalization” – Ranjit Hoskote.

“Riyas Komu’s recent paintings and sculptures propose a bold re-formatting of the genre of portraiture. Komu’s portraits are close-up shots of nameless and dispossessed individuals redeemed, visually if not materially, from the flux of life at the margins of globalization. These are faces of people captured in the attitude of waiting, of foreboding or memorializing: these are faces of witnesses, who depose before us, silently obliging us to acknowledge the genocides and mass migrations, the famines and desolations of our catastrophic epoch. Komu deploys portraiture, also, to register a cryptic side or oblique remark on contemporary culture. He does not not permit us direct and easy access to his subjects: in his handling, the portrait become a fateful reminder: we see the Other as framed by the televisual eye, for Komu’s figures are often marked as though with masking tape or black identity-protection bands or partially concealed by lattices. Signs of immunity from recognition, these semiotic interpolations double as threats of de-personalization: the rawness of the human predicament is sometimes camouflaged by these refinements, whoch convey both security and constraint in relation to Komu’s figures”. – Ranjit Hoskote

He paints pictures based on photographic references from the print and television media. His subjects are charged with significance bringing about a disturbance depicting an element of political disquiet. For Riyas Komu, art is a medium for social comment on the situations the world is facing today. His canvas has youthful and the immersion in urban iconography is perhaps most evident in his works. What is remarkable about the paintings of Riyas are the multiple media he uses. The works in oil are thick and over-layered, and this gives them more dimension and life. The figures and the backdrop spring out and hit you and there is no escaping from what first appears stark and simple and seem to get more and more complex as it grows on you. About his video: He has a passion for making documentary films. The one he worked on a couple of years back had an unusual theme –“The politics of nostalgia and food.”  A video movie of eight minutes, it was shot on the streets and roadside restaurants of Mumbai. “The documentaries I make are an extension of my feelings and views, and they have similar themes, toughing life’s many facets”, says Riyas.

His recent solo ‘Mark Him’ was held at The Guild, it mainly consisted of photographs. About these works Riyas says, “I have not known a greater joy than that of watching guys in shorts kicking a ball around. I have done the feetie myself a number of times. But there has always been a gnawing feeling in the back of my head that kept on saying: the best of goals are not always 'the best of goals'. So I set one for myself — to use art to redeem the place of our footballers in the society, in our history. Therefore, MARK HIM”.