An artist’s journey from abstraction to figurative or vice versa is always fascinating. Narender Pal Singh traverses this ground with his latest series The Sixth Element presented by Gallery Alternatives. A painter from Bihar settled in Delhi for many a year, Singh has been a pungent and indeed an entertaining commentator on the
contemporary reality surrounding him, especially exploring issues around the rural urban divide and migration within the figurative genre. Though the current selection on display does look at urban congestion and alienation, the artist seems to be focusing through abstraction more on philosophical and mystical traditions within Indian religion and art.
After his previous Panchatattva or Five Elements series, he seeks to evoke the ‘sixth element’ which takes the artist and viewer onto another level, away from the mundane, where meditation takes over from materiality and chaos.
The combination of the square and the circle; two vital geometric forms derived from the Indian artistic and philosophical systems, is repeatedly used in his paintings while the constituent triangle pierces these shapes with its elemental energy. Without actually replicating vedic and tantric mandalas and yantras the artist does bring forth the essence of these, through both the composition and the colours of his paintings. The hierarchical layering of the forms, arranged on a vertical is a device that is often used in traditional mystic and magical patterns to invoke the ascending and descending energies within the macrocosmic universe and the microcosmic human body.
Shrishti or creation/created is recreated in this work through the artist’s vision; with the procreative elemental waters as the base in which life originates and simulates the flowering of the world and the self. The circular and more defined orb of planetary life rests atop this base, encompassing within it dualities that make up the world: time and space, male and female, hot and cold, liquid and solid. A kundalini-like energy, a line of coiling helix links this with the higher realm, perhaps signifying consciousness and awakening. Purusha -prakriti, male-female duality resolved within a single energy force is invoked again in other paintings such as Shiva Shakti. While Narender Pal Singh handles bright colours with aplomb, one does miss the verve seen in his earlier works in the latest series.
— The writer is an art historian, curator and critic