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From Ash to Spring
Delhi based artist G. R. Iranna employs carefully chosen motifs exploiting
their visual and metaphorical potential. One such compelling motif that
appears in Iranna’s body of work is that of the tree. Tree here is not
merely a form or an image but an eternal entity. It stands as a silent
witness hiding the mysteries, secrets, and stories of the world in its womb.
It imbibes meditative qualities. The tree in Iranna’s paintings manifest in
diverse forms – blooming, withering, turning into log, and coming back to
life again. Presented here is a selection of paintings, From Ash to Spring,
that take us on the journey of Iranna’s artistic exploration which is a
visual treat.
“While reflecting on a twenty-year period in the oeuvre of G. R. Iranna, I
find myself marvelling at the variety of creative displacements to which he
has subjected himself: he has negotiated between an account of the social
predicament underwritten by the figure, yet has also revelled in the
pleasures of abstraction and pattern; he has elaborated a vibrant form of
compressed allegorical narrative in his paintings, yet has boldly translated
his concerns with freedom, oppression and the desire for emancipation into
sculpture and installation.” – writes eminent writer and curator Ranjit
Hoskote in his curatorial note on the artist's solo exhibition ‘And
the last shall be the first G. R. Iranna works 1995 - 2015’.
Iranna’s oeuvre spans from paintings to videos and sculptural installations,
deeply dwelling into the innerness of human life and the existential crisis
of the modern times – from temporal conflicts, to the spiritual dilemmas.
Iranna is known for his paintings and sculptures that strikingly draw
inspiration from philosophical doctrines, religious practices and symbols.
He finds insights in Lingayatism and Buddhism that emphasise on inner peace
and wisdom. His works are layered with evocative meanings and references to
morality, wisdom and ways of life. He takes these spiritual strands to
another level of creative expression by his artistic interventions and
unique rendering – especially the ephemeral material he employs such as ash,
clay and coal. His forms manifest in abstract manner, not in mere visual
sense, but in the manner in which the imagery spans out through patterns,
lines, pigments and textured surfaces, liberating the forms to envelope
different characteristics.
Within Iranna’s exploration of nature, human existence and the interrelation
between the two, the tree becomes an integral component in his works. For
Iranna, the tree symbolizes life, with all its connectedness to nature in
general and human life in particular. He deploys all its body parts –
branches, leaves, flowers, roots, trunk, and veins into his oeuvre. In its
own sense, the tree becomes a vehicle of deep philosophical explorations
about human-nature relationships which he attributes to his early upbringing
in the traditional setting of gurukul in southern India.
In this artistic quest, materials and mediums Iranna deploys become
important apparatuses. The ash has a deeper cultural and spiritual
significance, sacredness and value which historically dates back to ancient
times. Ash, also fundamentally residual remains of the tree seems to have
found its way spontaneously in his creative process. Iranna exploits the
sensibility and power of the ash by surpassing it from merely being a
‘medium’. For him, ash symbolizes both, the form and the formless. The
non-conventional base he opts for his paintings such as tarpaulin play a
significant role in bringing out the visual elements in a raw manner. The
scale of these paintings, as he says, overpower with their presence just as
the nature and magnanimity of trees do - take us within their fold, envelop
us, make us feel part of them, at the same time there is also this feeling
of awe the realization, more so now then before, that nature is all
powerful.
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