A Promising ‘Pebble’ among ‘9 Pebbles’

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Poster of '9 Pebbles'

Walter Benjamin once said, ‘Nature creates similarities. One need only think of mimicry and men have the highest capacity for producing similarities. His gift of seeing resemblances is a rudiment of the powerful compulsion in former times to become and behave like something else. Perhaps there is none of his higher functions in which his mimetic faculty does not play a decisive role.’ (On the Mimetic Faculty, 1933)

This mimetic faculty of human behavior transcends itself into theater and drama, which has a long prestigious history and present as well. This is the point where young artist P. Yogesh Naik finds his major inspiration for his works. Grown up in Chikkamangalore, Karnataka, Yogesh’s art found its  place at Chamarajendra Academy of Visual Arts (CAVA), Mysore, obtaining a bachelor of fine arts in painting which finally resulted into his move to Delhi for completing his master in fine arts with painting from College of Art, New Delhi in 2010.

Artist P. Yogesh Naik

Yogesh takes ‘mime’ as a preferred interest for his paintings because he venerate it as a strong expression of society which is also essential for a painter’s work. All this started developing its impact on Yogesh’s thought process when he became a part of ‘Rangayana’, a place for cultural activities and art center in Mysore, where dramas are staged. These dramas conveying the social problems and successfully connecting themselves to emotions of viewers left an urge to express the problematic social aspects over the artistic inside of Yogesh. He then felt that his brush could be a strong tool to express his own dilemma’s connecting to society at whole.

This aspect of Yogesh’s art practice could be traced over the philosophical terrains of ‘Catharsis’, a theory given by Greek philosopher Aristotle in his work ‘Poetics’ and afterwards discussed by many other philosophers/aestheticians. Catharsis is a term for dramatic art which describes the ‘emotional cleansing’ sometimes depicted in a play as occurring for one or more of its characters, as well as part of the audience's experience. It describes an extreme emotional change, as the result of experiencing strong feeling (such as sorrow, fear, pity, or even laughter). Thus result into ‘purification’ or a ‘purging’ of such emotions. In that context, it refers to a sensation or literary effect that would either be experienced by the characters in a play, or be wrought upon the audience at the conclusion of a tragedy; the release of pent-up emotion or energy which Yogesh wants to bring out with his brush.

Untitled, Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches, 2010

Gomati, Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 inches, 2010

His work reveals own inner questions which stands in the form of raised issues of world around him within a made framework of imagination executed through the satirical images. The figures in their delicate, sly and playful world are almost invariably focused on an event, animated by a mutual curiosity, pointing out something that is odd, incongruous or comically bizarre. For the viewer the wit resides as much in the scale of the depictions as it does in the finely summarized telling detail of the vignette.

Drama actors, their body movements, expressions and psychological effects they leave upon mind and later they developed narrative language in stylistic discourse of painting. Here, Yogesh has also inspired by the ‘Lambani’, a form of tribal art of Karnataka, which uses lots of patterns and designs in crowded manner, the same is seen in his paintings where figures are huddled or scattered all around on the canvas in large number via meticulous representation of them.

Untitled, Acrylic on canvas, 104 x 142 inches, 2010

Untitled, Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 72 inches, 2011

Market, Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72 inches, 2012

In most of the works faces are wearing masks as they are drama actors, but Yogesh feel the mask; a layer between real and taken, because it hides the identity of wearer and translate the whole act to external world in the form of a performance. As we all are the performers on the enormous stage of society, and characters of his each painting speaks about their inner urges suppose they are performing on the stage of canvas, as their funny gestures says more than what reflects on surface.

While the source of expressions is dramas, the mudras/hand movements are mainly influenced by ‘Bharatnatyam’, a dance which express lot of finger movements. The relationship between the body movement and expression is to create drama in the mind as this simply created dramatic effect becomes strong enough to convey artist’s message to the society. Creating dramatic situations through the canvases has been the prime interest of the artist, which could able to affect directly on the sensitivity of viewer; while the post college period he slowly started to shift towards the city life which he was experiencing after moving to metropolitan like New Delhi. The reality of metropolitan stood strongly in front of him because his earlier serene village world was no more now.

 

So, there was a parallel project to him, what he was analyzing towards new experience of time and place. This led him to play with his childhood memories which he started  reinserting into contemporary experiences along with amalgamated version of social realities and their political context for instance poverty, identity crisis, dilemma of relationships and of all lose of human values which are generally born out of population explosion and psychological phenomena of modern societies.

Thrust, Oil & Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 72 inches, 2009

Deep Thrust, Acrylic on canvas, 52 x 66 inches, 2011 

As in work ‘Thrust’ and ‘Deep Thrust’, idea is basically born out of childhood memory of village life where people used to gather around the well for taking water and the whole milieu created by them gives him opportunity to paint the scenario in urban context too; where he connect the scene to current social and political conditions as politicians works only for their individual profit and their thrust can’t be ever completed, on the other hand the rural places which truly demands development remains same even towards the so called progress of cities.  This memory of well scene provide him glimpses of long-lasting queues waiting for just a bucket of water, Sometimes as the line ends, the flow of water might stop and no one could have water for the rest of the day. It simply shows how man is struggling at every step of his life and there are people like the politicians who rule us and do not give us anything except their false promises, where common people are merely puppets in the hands of these politicians who literally rule our lives. This scene of long-lasting queues continues to date only context changes from water to LPG cooking Gas and Kerosene etc.

Red Alert, Oil & Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 72 inches, 2008

Untitled, Oil & Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 72 inches, 2009 

Yogesh also shows the ambitious destinations of metro city living people those are always in hurry and ready for shortcuts to achieve somehow they want. In one work via making a crowd trying to capture the aircraft, Yogesh has interestingly pointed out their psyche by making few of them without wearing footwear and some of minimized figures in try to using other’s shoulders.

Untitled, Acrylic on paper, 48 x 60 inches, 2011

Similarly in his work ‘Street Walk’, he creates a large and long road is full of crowd where people walking besides each other without interacting to one, suppose everyone means of his own destine but they are creating a scenario with all combined amaze him lot. Their physical presence and mental state both seems paradoxical quest which he has depicted through a washy memory of such places as among the meticulous presentation of human figures some of blank outlined figures has left. These crowded roads have hundreds people doing hundred things, unseen by our hurried eyes. Things we see in a particular situation but everyone is in hurry enough to ignore the stark realities happening around and we all still continues living normal life without turning an eye behind.

Street walk, Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 72 inches, 2011

Freeze, Oil & Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 72 inches, 2008

Untitled, Oil & Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 72 inches, 2008

The dramatic relation created by the linear figures and flat black color presented against the figurative foreground results into painterly quality of works. Expressing thoughts by using minimum colors has been a great challenge to Yogesh, but he accepted the challenge and succeeded in it because he believes ‘Minimum is Maximum’. The black color represents the darkness of life or rather the dark parts of life which man refuses to see. In few of the works colorful objects also make their presence to show worldly pressures and silhouette of modern world. It also depict lush green past of the man as he has forgotten the beautiful entity relationships and humanity in the run for false ambitions. Sometimes drained human feelings have shown by making human skeletons and keeping them black and white in color.

Nostalgic, Oil & Acrylic on canvas, 4 x 6 feet

Untitled, Acrylic on canvas, 52 x 66 inches, 2011

Due to increasing population survival gets tougher day by day which Yogesh shows in ‘The speaking tree’ where the crowd of people trying to survive in the same place. As the crowd increases, the branches grow. Here, one can see a delicate relationship between a man with another man where each one is holding the other by some kind of an invisible thread for survival which can be economical, emotional or some other. Similarly ‘used virgin’ depicts toilet pot being used by many everyday. It might not be cleaned but reused again by another man. It is a place of relief for a man, but not given a state in the society. Here the toilet pot could be connected to a ‘female’ being used by men to satisfy his pleasures. At the end of the day she is only ‘other’ like a toilet pot, which is used and forgotten and still treated as a place of dirt and stink.

Speaking tree, Oil & Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 72 inches, 2009

Speaking tree, Acrylic on paper, 22 x 28 inches, 2009

Used virgin, Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 148 inches, 2009

Used virgin, Acrylic on paper, 22 x 28 inches, 2011

Used virgin, Acrylic on canvas, 26 x 48 inches

Here, Yogesh exemplify thematic endeavors showing nuances of daily life in urban metropolitan cities, highlighting hustle and bustle, chaos; involving the dynamic actions of multiple characters. These lure him to engage in the so called struggle for existence by making anxious landscapes of city dwelling which is the large question yet to be explored.

Yogesh’s art practice is promising enough to develop a deep dialogue with his contemporary time. He is the recipient of HRD Ministry of Culture, Junior Artists Fellowship 2010 and has exhibited his works around Mysore, Vadodara, Haryana and New Delhi. Recently his works were concluded in a group exhibition ‘9 Pebbles’ organized by Creativity Art Gallery in February-March 2012 at Shridharani Art Gallery, Tansen Marg, New Delhi which is also on the view at Creativity Art Gallery, Lado Sarai, New Delhi.

Image Courtesy: The Artist