In the paintings of Gopikrishna, the presence of the female figure is conspicuous by its absence.
It is a man’s world – where you find only the “heat” of the male.
The artist is motivated by Frendean thoughts according to which at the root of everything is – sex.
We see a bit of the psyche of the male. There is maleness there – totally exposed and standing and turgid – but somehow it does not look “vulgar”. The artist uses symbols. There are lizards in the paintings moving about freely. They have wings. Did lizards have wings? That’s it. That comes from the imagination of the artist. There is uninhibited work there. It all adds up – nicely. Nothing seems to be preplanned. There is no fixed style. Anyway, there is nothing abstract in the works. Everything is stark. But the head of a man can be removed like the cork of a bottle and placed on the ground. And some liquid can be poured into the opening and later screwed up again. Images can appear at any level. Everything can get distorted. It all depends on the whim of the artist. The male figure can be dwarted with large, round faces.
Some thoughts of the artist: About “the Carnival of Emotions” series, he says: “While doing these paintings, I felt death has answered back. Each stroke given, each face painted was done to give life to moments otherwise lost in the darkness of time. The paintings are records of serious emotions, weather conditions, anxieties.
I mostly prefer earthy colour as my subject always has a link between life and nature – nature as God made it, not a nature man remade. My characters co-exist, the flesh, the tree and the sky together.”
About the Sankara Bhavanom paintings he says: “I painted the five small oils with a primitive vigour and enjoyed the experience very much. It was as if I was in my true world. Images which may be viewed as representations of violence creep into my paintings as symbols that are sometimes ungraphable by human knowledge. It is like a natural phenomenon – an earthquake, storm or flood which will carry images of torn flesh, mutilated bodies but it also ask the question: what does this mean? The images you see as violent are the same as outpouring of great energy nature outlets… I like to see myself as part of the animal kingdom who fears nothing but the human eye only.
The watercolours at the exhibition represents the inner journey of the artist. “In existence, it seems to me that some secrets exist behind the enigma of pain, death and life. These secrets are cyclical, appearing and disappearing again and again. In my watercolours, this travel of the self gets a projection.
The exhibition which begins today will go on till October 23. Contact: Tel. 22163339.