Sonorous a group Show by Faculty members 2018

The Visual Arts Faculty Group Show

On April 21, 2018, the AADITYA Art Gallery of The IIS University, Jaipur was crowded for a very special event: the Fine Arts Faculty Group Show ‘SONOROUS’ inaugurated by PDG Ajay Kala Secretary General, Jaipur Chamber of Commerce & Industry at 5:00 pm. Teachers across the spectrum of the visual arts presented at the show. Amongst the viewers were senior artists lobby of Jaipur, art collectors and curators. Show represented twelve faculty members of the department of Visual Arts. And thus there were a variety of different media presented, including Acrylic on canvas, Mixed Media, Illustration on paper, Print Collage, Sculptures in Bronze, Photography, Printmaking including woodcut and etching as artists were from painting, applied art, sculpture, printmaking, photography and art history backgrounds.

Prof. Bhawani Shanker Sharma presented 3D Print collage in this show. Colorful, eclectic, detailed and eye-catching are some of the adjectives we can use to describe Prof. Sharma’s 3D-printed creations. His work is an exploration in contrasts – between materials he uses, values, colors and personal content. He chose the material which fits best with his ideas and then executed them and this whole process is very playful and intuitive. About his art he says that “My paintings, sketches and drawings develop as a series of interlocking and reciprocally explicative meditations. Every new painting provides some addition which illuminates the whole. Popularly known for peacock, fair series paintings, murals and graphic prints, I did exploit various art forms out of curiosity instead of challenge. Apart from the easel, canvas and the palette l ventured into the sculpture making, working with scrap metal created by hitting, welding and fixing, especially after the tender strokes in thesanctum of my studio. ”.

Dr. Ujjvala M. Tiwari (Faculty of Painting) contributed a number of multi-coloured acrylic medium paintings. Free-flowing liquid paints and mediums are at the heart of the pouring process of Dr. Tiwari which she titled as series of Ecstasy. Reason behind using vivid colours on a single canvas is her style for which she says that I appreciate each paint color as its own unique formula and pigments vary in their density and ability to move and spread. The way to best describe the approach to pouring application is the concept of setting the stage to allow the paints themselves to do what they want to do, wherever they want to move and set down; in other words, controlled chaos.  They readily move and interact. She quotes “Art is a pious and holy expression of an artist’s soul and spirit in colours and strokes; the silent articulation of emotions which is alive from centuries….”

Dr. Giriraj Sharma (Faculty of Sculpture) created Bronze sculptures in various sizes. His ornamental figurines were an eye-catching part of the decor of the gallery. Birds, animals and human figures are the highlights of this sculptor. The forms are simplified toward clean lines accentuating elegant movement or its absence and rhythmic shapes either individually or in small groups. His bronze sculptures possess a unique expressiveness because of their material and casting technique and can fit in any decor. Dr. Sharma about his sculptures says that an exact model is made by me of which an impression is taken to create the mold and the mold is cast, which can be done in different ways, though the most common one used by me is the lost-wax method. Every bronze sculpture begins with an artist and an idea and only through artistry and the knowledge of methods passed down for thousands of years does the idea become a bronze sculpture. For this creation he says that little things in my surrounding ask me to create…

Dr. Mahesh Singh (Faculty of Printmaking) is specialized in printmaking, a technique that is based on the concept of creating a master plate, known as the matrix. This is used to transfer the image onto paper. Dr. Singh creates different surface textures, black color effects and forms, just as in a painting, producing a unique piece of art which defines his own style and personality. He prefers to leave the traces of wood’s grain or texture behind his composition when he works on wood. For his prints he says that “My representation appears straightforward until incongruity and malicious details float to the surface of moods. Snarled faces that repeatedly appear in my prints depicts impecunious of an ordinary man’s life. Upon further contemplation, I realise why all the portraits do show apt faces? Like the ghostly figures that inhabit them, I dissolute spaces that have little place in reality. Like a memory transforming from thin air into something with the saddle”.          

Mr. Shwet Goel (Faculty of Applied art) adorned huge and small colourful canvases in mixed media, a series of untitled works. Mr. Goel applied acrylic colours and applies them as well as sprays them on a created textured base. He mixes up his medium for the texture and apply it with a spatula, and may more tools whatever he feels to use to get the desired texture on the surface of a canvas, not to the whole canvas but just add it to certain parts. Make marks and patterns in the texture and also scrape parts of the texture off so that the canvas appears through in patterns. He says that I try to make the patterns random and think about the rule of thirds or the golden mean for places to put strategic large pieces of interesting texture. Then alayer of blended paint is applied neat onto the canvas with different colours blended into each other. About the present series of works he says that “As literature is expressed with a written vocabulary, art is expressed with a visual vocabulary. My painting reflects me and my views towards life. I use texture to express my emotions, feelings and vivacity of nature. It contains a composition, a pattern of light and dark, shape and form, colour and contrast that intrigue me”.

Dr. Amita Raj Goyal (Faculty of Painting) displayed figurative compositions in acrylics. Creating textures at the background, she brought forms in facade beautifying and balancing the milieu. About the thought behind her art she says “The feeling of affection is portrayed by me with something gone astray of that seeks its fulfillment in beauty which is reflected in my pictures of transience as an infinite longing. My visuals display love which is always in a state of lack and hence of desire, the desire to possess the beautiful. I think of beauty as the mark of art that speaks to our craving. My works own beautiful things that don't stand aloof, but they quicken the sense of life, giving it a fresh silhouette”.

Dr. Kanu Priya (Faculty of Art History) demonstrated small sized canvases looking like heritage layouts by creating newspaper paper look aged or rusted. She used methods for making ordinary newspaper appear artfully antique and damaged and then painted miniature sized endangered birds and animals of Rajasthan on it. Accompanied by those fauna are shown nayika or female character, the favourites of Rajasthan miniature painting artists. About her works she says that we are living in an era defined by extinctions. The blackbuck, the Indian bustard, the tiger, the black francolin and the Malabar whistling thrust, once profusely festooned Rajasthani Miniature paintings as a companion of nayika, went extinct, along with countless other species from the Rajasthan, with no catastrophic or even reckonable effects. Not only is the new wave of extinction all our fault, but it will also probably be our demise. At my heart was the belief that the human activity is driving an extinction of other species which is an alarming situation and this came out with few visuals.

Dr. Nirupama Singh (Faculty of Painting) stretched beyond her painting expertise with printmaking technique. But subject possessing bird series is common amongst two different techniques she works upon. But with their figures dramatically cropped or isolated against completely filled in backgrounds, her etchings achieve a startling new sense of formal naturalism. Although best known as a painter, etching also became integral to her practice. This exhibition presented the full scope of nature’s admiration and close observation of hers in the etching. For her works she says that “My artworks are inspired by my love of natural world-close to my home where I live and have provided an endless source of inspiration and fueled a passion for field-sketching.A passion for wild-life and nature‘s beauty combined with love and paint is my inspiration for art. This passion has turned into my life as I paint my paintings embrace the awe I feel when I am out in the landscape .It is the little things that inspire me, a sunbeam lit up through the clouds, a scene that is touched with golden light, elegant movements of the birds, the beauty, softness of their plumage and the unique flora and fauna. While the size of my work varies, I always search for that “special moment” and I use photography as a reference tool to capture that split second movement of a bird flitting through the bush”.

Ms. Sheetal Chitlangia (Faculty of Applied art) transforms human figures, geometrical forms and ornaments all together skillfully covering an architectonic composition concealing or accentuating the canvas. She divide her representations into a scheme of patterned lines flowing onto the surface and came up with a highly original version of ornamental image-making, and it is no accident that we find non-representational, marginal zones, reverberating like an echo of the composed scene she designs. Although they grow out of the depths of the picture and thus still act as appendages, they seem to prefigure abstract painting whose subject matter was to become ornamentation itself. With the advance of sweeping simplicity and purity of forms, ornament inevitably sank into obsolescence. For her compositions she says that “The technological advancement in the society have snatched away the peace and harmony from our lives. Through my paintings, I have tried to depict the past, wherein people used to spend time together, how they used to enjoy every little occasion, every moment of their life.”

Ms. Kritika Agarwal (Faculty of Applied art specialized in Photography) offered framed prints of her recent panoramic photographs with clear and detailed high resolution images of today’s sight of Rajasthan. For her photographs she says that “A photographer like me is a street seeker, curious about hunting street’s every aspect. The wonders of life are exhilarating, and I take photographs of fleeting moments that may exist outside of a greater narrative and might otherwise go unnoticed. I organise and create an image before capturing it to grab the perfect moment as it occurs spontaneously happenstance — an unplanned moment in public space. My pictures reveal the cities through my eyes. I enjoyed a beautiful view that seemed to span from far left to far right, making you move your head just to see everything. My panoramics have been shot seeing the scene as a wide-angle composition in my mind, and therefore thinking in layers and including foreground, middle, and background layers to give it depth and sense of 3D”.

Mr. Virendra Pratap Singh (Faculty of Applied art) worked on canvas in mixed media technique for this show. For his representation he says that “My works present the reminiscence of time investigating the simplicity yet complexity of painting's relationship to the time and my thoughts. To depict the moment, I have illustrated clocks, an unconscious representation of the relativity of space and time. Works in monochrome possess very soft texture, lots of contrast and tone in the pictures. The inimitable approach of clock’s position symbolizes the fleeting or the endlessness of time as in many instances I experience the same in my sleep or awaken conscious state. Picture’s stillness signifies contemplation on the inescapable importance of timing.”            

Ms. Bharti Sharma (Faculty of Applied art)   exhibited her illustrations and a painting displaying her applied art sensibility. For her art she says that “Every moment we are creating our experience. Our thoughts, our words, our actions are all instances of our ability to bring forth something in the space where nothing existed before. And this is not a mere analogy. Your creative power over your life is a reflection of your innate creative ability. Perhaps you hadn’t thought of it that way, or perhaps like many of us, you are creating your life experience unconsciously and therefore, not really benefiting from having a choice to say how it goes. Art is life and just like life, you must always express your feelings freely”.