Vibrant vastness
The young Siraj Saxena was educated in Indore and lives in Delhi. His recent paintings at Time & Space (July 18 to 26) present another very cultured but not quite original variant of the now characteristic abstract range that is practiced by many artists from Madhya Pradesh and the capital who were inspired by Raza and Swaminathan.

 Saxena, rather than exhibiting that direct lineage, seems to participate in the kind of highly abstracted landscape represented by younger and mid-generation painters, like Seema Gurayya and Rajnish Kaur, although without having the subtlety of the aerial mappings by the former and the passionately vibrant freshness by the latter.

His canvases in acrylic with oils and his acrylics on hand-made paper are careful, well structured and finely textured compositions that play on juxtapositions as well as pervasiveness of vast expanses seen from afar, from above and the tactile proximity of the surface. Over largely monochromatic picture planes in sunshine oranges and nocturnal blues, he stays with the densely and opaquely hatched surface while evoking more translucent spatial recesses and bird’s eye view mapping angles that continue the abbreviated hatching strokes in a softer manner.

He balances successfully the foundation in regularity wit its nuances. He ably varies meaty pigments with the graphic elements of lines and textures, wash-like effects, illumination and passing, suspended shadows.

   The sceneries are animated, especially as the painter introduces strings of brief, interrupted orientation markings, though the frequent arrow motif may be excessive and too literal. Occasionally the landscape sublimations acquire traces of figures or still-lifes. There is a meditative stillness there and a sharper dynamism too, as the spectator may intuit a spiritual intent. All that does come through, but achieved with a dose of the déjà vu, while the painter's facility seems to be serving pleasantness more than revelation.

Sacred nature
The photographic exhibition about the Narmada by Jogesh Thakar (CKP, July 16 to 22), sponsored by the Gujarat Lalitkala Acadami, appeared to be an evocative documentation of a journey along the river’s course made by a devout person with a painter's sensitivity. As it turns out, this senior photographer from Ahnedabad has affine arts background.

 The artist views his subjects through a number of classic approaches, and instead of trying to evidently imprint his personality, genuinely attunes himself to it. Hence, on the whole the prints are expressive of a natural exuberance and raw grace.

He is at his best when capturing and enhancing the already aesthetically striking qualities inherent on the landscape or in sites of modest, folk shrines, so making them imbued with the spirit and energy of the places and their people.

This happens in particular when Thakar focuses on one dominant formal property, as in the almost parallel, leaning marble rock benches of the Narmada or in the rhythmic monochrome of the plied cow-dung cakes in a village.

Among the close-ups one can admire the vermillion-anointed back of the Nandi bull statue juxtaposed with an equally sensuous shot of a ritually painted stone.

The painterly basis of the artist comes through with a touching note in the image of a man worshipping a Mandla deity in a niche and as though physically merging with it.

Although many of the deliberate juxtapositions of particular shots are interesting aesthetically and ethos-wise, the mounting could have been done better or, if restricted by finances, at least simpler and cleaner. Sporadically, the computer-induced brightness may be too jolly.

On the whole, the display would have been more evocative, had it been devoid of explanations which introduce a bit of messiness to the often fine imagery.

Folklorism
The three youngish painters from northern Karnataka, who exhibited together recently (CKP, July 10 to 13), are very enthusiastic about their local heritage observed in its manifestations among rustic life. They go about expressing it, yet, in somewhat easy ways being often dependent on already established idioms. B.K. Badiger's collages of softly realistic figures against abstracted grounds have more sincerity but fall partly into designing. Manjunath K Mane paints folkloristic scenes in bright colours and a cutely cartoonish stylisation. Ramesh Chavan marries freely applied abstract brushing with amorphous patterns and figure fragments echoing of earlier, easily contemporary styles. Competent, each artist nevertheless looks for a formula.

Mannered
The ample number of the smallish works by Tina Prabhu falls into too many disconnected idioms.

Her rather amateurish paintings displayed at the Abstract Art Gallery (July 18 to 24) draw on traditional art as well as on its modernist stylisations, surreal disruptions of form and their abstracted or geometrised variants.
The reliance on tight, often almost parallel lines may connect them to an extent, but remains a facile external mannerism. The use of excessively bright or gay colours does not help.