SK Sahni: 50 years of journey with lines

SK Sahni: 50 years of journey with lines Ved Prakash Bhardwaj It is easy to draw a straight line but very difficult to maintain its character in a group especially when they become part of a structure. Line and structure have different characters and many times they are contradictory to each other; but when a balanced hand and mind with full of thoughts direct the lines, they become an elegant expression. S.K. Sahni is an artist of our time who has proved it again and again over the last 50 years. How is it possible for him? I think it has a relation with his soul which is very simple, straight, and soft, like his lines. He plays with lines like a magician and each time a simple line appears with a new shine in a different context.  A single line can also be art, but its meaning is not clear, but when many lines together give birth to a shape, then its meaning becomes more clear. Society is not made of a single person but of a group of persons, similarly, the artwork is made of many lines and shapes meet. SK Sahni's art lines have a social life. Many lines run parallel in different directions and sometimes cross each other to form a web. It is a symbiosis of lines that gives rise to a form that is abstract but also very familiar.

Sahni started his artistic quest in figures with abstraction in the 60s. He focused on human conditions without a narrative attitude. Some of his paintings of that time have clear figures but most of them have abstract connotations. He did a lot of lino-cut prints. Later he did digital abstract graphics. When he did watercolor landscapes, again he moved from a realistic to an abstract approach. We can easily find that he thinks and transforms each thing in abstraction. He loves drawings and geometrical forms since the beginning, and till 70’s he did experiments in different mediums and forms. Since the 1980’s he has concentrated his total focus on lines and geometrical forms. Sometimes his forms look like architectural forms but you can’t generalize them, because he always focuses on space and not on structure. 

He starts by drawing a line in unbounded space and slowly the space transforms into a stage where lines are dancing and making different shapes, reflecting the development of human society. Human beings have always wished to bind time and space which is impossible till today, but an artist can do it symbolically in his creation, and it is an unending process. An artwork has a starting point but doesn’t have an ending point; an ending means there is nothing left for us to do. Sahni’s paintings are a perfect combination of painting and drawing which have unending lines, reflecting endless hope and life. He moves lines in different directions, sometime collator and sometimes they cross each other and leave some spaces blank to create a concrete image. It is difficult to identify any starting or ending point in his lines. That is why line-based art becomes an endless journey for him.  

Lines in the art are not a new thing in India. In our folk and tribal art, it has a long practice to create images with lines. It is inherent in life, so they do not need any technical definition for that, but the West always needs that, and due to our educational system, we follow the West. People relate Sahni’s art to Kinetic or OP art which comes from the West. Kinetic or OP art is a technic which can help to build an image with lines and create fusion. But Sahni’s art is not a technical quest, it is more than that. 

In the West, most OP artists use the total surface as a positive space and very few try to balance between positive and negative space. Optical Illusion is the main target for Western artists and that practice continues. But Sahni follows the Indian ideology that emphasizes the balancing of negative and positive aspects in life. He creates space within space, negative space between positive spaces and which becomes his specialty. Sahni creates an illusion of negative and positive space many times in his works. In his earlier paintings, the total space is full of movements, but in recent years, I want to underline a major change in his works and that is the balance of movement and steadiness of space. As young people, we are all enthusiastic to give a movement to live, we try to fill life full of emotions, relations, creation, and whatever we can do, but with maturity and experience, we understand the importance of a blank space in life. The blank space, whether it will be narrow or broad, without any movement gives us relaxation; we find a space that is only for us. We try to save some little time from social life for us or we can say that we always try to shield a narrow corner in the crowd, like an inner space within outer space. I think that is the reason Sahni uses a different composition from his earlier paintings. 

He uses different tones of colors and textures in some parts of his paintings which gives a different feeling to viewers, evokes moods and emotions and lines give them direction. He says “A straight line is pure, unsentimental, and unconditional of any subjective feelings. However, when placed in conjunction with other lines, it may evoke different emotions and moods.”  Previously, he used direct lines on the canvas, but today he has developed a different technique. He uses masking tape of different thicknesses to create different lines, and also some tools to create lines. For that first, he paints and then draws lines with his tools and gets lines that look like dancing. He plays with lines and shapes in space and captures their spontaneous movements of them, but sometimes he directs the lines intellectually and arrange them with shapes. Even, sometimes he cuts a finished work into equal pieces and then arranged and reassembled it in a different order to discover new images. He created a series ‘reflections’ through that process. 

He knows and accepts that his images are not pre-conceived, so he always looked at each pattern and line as a different identity, identity of moods, and emotions which are changing from time to time with the situation. Each line or group of lines and shapes is a reflection of human conditions in a particular situation. Lines come close to each other and go away from each other, horizontal and vertical lines, all reflections of physiological and psychological human conditions. I am seeing his paintings for the last ten years. The simplicity of his personality, which reflects in his art captivates me. He is very clear in his thoughts and art, and very noble to hear others on his art, as well as accepting others' creations. This nobility makes him a great person and artist.  Artist’s statement  The shortest distance between two points is a straight line that does not exist in nature and is a creative concept of man. It has no emotive quality of its own but is capable of evoking unique experiences. Thus a straight line is pure, unsentimental, and unconditional of any subjective feelings. However, when placed in conjunction with other lines, it may evoke different emotions and moods.  For my creative expression, I search images in space with straight lines. In some works, the line is replaced by the masking tape of different thicknesses. The image is allowed to develop & establish its own identity. Pains taxingly – line by line – the image is being built gradually. It passes through various stages by adding color and is allowed to take its shape. And finally, the image is revealed. I do not know from where it has come. It is compulsive activity, partially spontaneous & partially intellectual. The image is free from any preconceived thoughts, notions, and ideas. It is beyond recognition in terms of manmade or nature-made objects or realities and tensions of life. Thus it is free from any such bondage.