Eclectic strokes
Birds Henry Moore by the artist
An intriguingly titled show of paintings, Birds, Butterflies and Henry Moore, by Ravi Gossain is on display at Gallery Ragini. There are birds perched on his forms, sometimes acting as witnesses/observers, sometimes giving the composition direction by raising its face towards the light source.
The butterflies provide an alterity to the massive, solid forms, representing ephemeral, delicate superstructures.
The artist uses Henry Moore as a sensibility, with whose sculptural forms, Gossain engages in a dialogue. Henry Moore is all about form, and Gossain understands the possibility of excavating spaces through Moore. Like Moore, form is also important in Gossain’s works and is kept centrestage.
Instead of using the conventional compositional strategy of offsetting a massive form with a light background, Gossain undertakes the difficult proposition of painting a solid centre with a dense backdrop of dark colours of the same palette, applied with aggressive, bold strokes. Even when the focus of his composition is a dark undulating cocoon, on which a rocky structure with a bird is precariously balanced, the aura remains intense and almost impenetrable.
In his artistic journey the artist has progressed from colour to form. Even today, he confesses, to being an impulsive colourist. In this show, one can see how he has tried to control colour, playing with vignette effects and tonalities. In one of the compositions he plays with tones of Mars orange, and grey, juxtaposing solid and hollow circular balls with diagonal and vertical planes, giving it a skeletal, mechanical look.
In his quest to study colour as an adjunct of space, and also to examine the co-axial axis of time he has painted a chronograph; bands of different colours not unlike those that appear on an empty television screen before transmission starts. The series Stretch of Time endeavours to represent cyclical time, Dawn to Dusk — by series of bands of colour, represents various moods and light during the day.
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