S G Vasudev: understand and express the life

Ved Prakash Bhardwaj The art of senior artist SG Vasudev is an expression of the human environment with different dimensions. He opens different layers of life in his paintings. In this process of seeing and opening life, he keeps the physical condition of man as well as his psychological condition in the center. He focuses on the interrelationships between all living and non-living elements of the world and the influence of the environment on the conditions of human life. Folk life with its cultural dimensions is reflected in the copper plate works. SG Vasudev's solo exhibition 'Containing Multitudes' is on at Bharat Art Space Gallery in Gurugram. Art critic Johnny Mll is the curator of the exhibition. Bharat Art Space Gallery is the new hub of art in Gurugram. In the last few years, Gurugram has emerged as a new art hub.

One of the challenges for the modern artist is to understand and express life in its contradictions. No one form of art, one style, or one medium is sufficient for this. That's why Vasudev works in different mediums. Continuous experimentation and change can be seen in his works. Sometimes the change seen in his work is a result of the medium or the art material. For example, when he does relief work on copper plates, he approaches the folk arts of South India. His love for folk arts is evident all over the world. It is a different matter that he gives a new identity to folk arts in his composition style.

If we look at the paintings included in this exhibition, there are more such paintings in which there is more abstraction. Vasudev's identity has been that of a figurative artist, but now abstraction has come in a more effective form in his works. There is often a face at the centre of his paintings, around which he creates figures with the effect of abstraction. In this way, he avoids the meaning of the picture being limited to the face. Some of these paintings are in this exhibition. Another composition of his appears with many faces. In such paintings, he adopts an abstract style instead of a completely realistic style. There are one or two such pictures in this exhibition.

Most of the paintings in the exhibition are abstract paintings, although their abstraction is a slightly altered form of the real world. For example, while creating a tree in an abstract style, he still maintains the possibility of imagining its real image. Not only this, he makes the tree come alive by creating human faces on it. The titles of his paintings Tree of Life, and Theatre of Life indicates how important the dramatic moments of human life are. Dramatization here does not mean the mere presentation of a written story on stage. In the drama of life, everything is not pre-written, not predetermined. Contingencies are central to the drama of life. There is uncertainty in that. Vasudev tries to reveal it in his paintings. He has given the title Theatre of Life to many of his paintings. Similarly, the title of some paintings is a rhapsody.

Trees are a major subject of his art. In many paintings, the tree has come in both its real and abstract forms. He expresses the depth of human relationship with nature in many ways. For this, he portrays humans and other creatures along with trees. In copper relief, he uses motifs from folk art with trees. Apart from this, the subject of many of his paintings is women. By keeping the woman in the center, he gives new expression to the emotional relations and feelings of life.

There are also some tapestries in this exhibition. The structure is similar to that of a painting. One such work is titled Human Space. In this, the use of many abstract motifs in one face makes the picture rich in meaning. Vasudev's color palette is mostly monochromatic. He adds depth to the picture by using different tones of that one colour. In some paintings, he uses other colours but he does not disturb the main colour of the picture. He works in oil colours. White colour has been used more in some of the paintings included in the exhibition. By the way, he mostly uses orange, blue, brown, and yellow ochre colours. His colour palette is multi-collared only in a few paintings.