What do you make of an artist who sheds his ego enough to learn techniques of art from signboard painters? That is Alexis Kersey for you. Born to an English father and Australian mother, this artist has largely made India his home. Kersey has now come up with a show of works that fuses western perspectives of art with Indian techniques (ranging from classical art to the art of signboards).

Right from the time he was a toddler, Kersey has been exposed to Indian art. In fact, the first five years of his life were spent at Srirangapatnam in Karnataka, a place that brims with artistic ethos.

Later of course, he moved to London, but eventually returned to the country where he was born, and now shuttles between Chennai, Mysore and London, which is perhaps the factor that endows his art with an off-beat, pan-global perspective, placing his art neither here, nor there, but somewhere in between. Kersey is far removed from those who consider art to occupy a lonely pinnacle by itself.

“To me, the art of the sign board painters and the pictorial language of Indian street advertising hold as much value as say, abstract art, in terms of poignancy,” Kersey says.

Kersey takes off from the company school of art, which is the collective name given to the paintings made by Indian studios during the British era.

It was a time when the local styles of the various regions colonised by the British were adapted as per the taste of the colonisers, so you had a mix of British sensibilities and Indian techniques, to which some purists might object to.

Nevertheless, this eclectic style of art grew and came to be known as the company school of art. Kersey continues on the same lines, in the sense that he uses techniques and elements of style of Indian art.

For instance, he has heavily bordered his works – with frames nearly a foot wide. The borders sport ornamental motifs, something that is typical of Indian art. But rather than the floral ornamentation which Indian art abounds with, Kersey uses powerful motifs like the human eye, symbolically referring to vision and insight.

Metaphorical eye

There are also tattoos, serpents and other symbols of Indian mysticism in Kersey’s works, but it is the eye motif that predominates. In fact, you can’t escape these wide open eyes that Kersey seems to have taken a fancy to.

The metaphorical eye appears all over Kersey’s works, making one raise a curious eyebrow at Kersey’s adoption of the Indian concept of the third eye of knowledge.

Kersey’s protagonist’s features look definitely Indian. On one hand, they are heavily ornamented. On the other hand, they are even hairless, Kersey choosing to keep his protagonist unmarked and unclassified. In fact, all the works feature the same person dressed up in different contexts and categories. In some works, the protagonist has been left naked. Luckily, these images have not been given vulgar touches.

Kersey rounds of these portraits with the glossy and smooth finish encountered in sign board art, still managing to give them a subtle glow. This effect is particularly arresting in his black and white works. Kersey himself refers to his style and genre of art as a contemporary form of the company school of art.

You don’t really wonder about the person that Kersey features in his frames. It could be anybody and everybody, because, Kersey hasn’t personalized his protagonist, using it as a tactic tool to encourage the viewer to identify himself with the protagonist.

In the end, it is about Kersey’s take on contemporary conflicts in the socio-cultural-political arena that our lives have become enmeshed in. By mixing up images of modern gadgets with ancient styles and motifs, Kersey attempts to lead our focus on to the mixed and eclectic lives that we lead now. Kersey looks at globalization from a cultural, artistic point of view.

Calming the viewer

His works are subversive, in the sense that the concepts he dabs on his canvasses do not leap to the eye at first glance.

In fact, at first glance, the works seem too simplistic and superficial, an effect that is further augured by the smooth finish typical of billboard art. The smooth and uniform tone of the paintings doubles up as a tactic to calm the viewer and help him take in the concepts espoused, rather than the external form.

A more than casual look will take the viewer through deeper layers of meaning, and concepts which he could connect with. Keep your eyes wide open – your inner eye, that is.