Menacing sensuousness
The latest exhibition at Sumukha presented an interesting and passionately conceived work of Meera George (February 2 to 15). This young artist educated in the West and sharing her time between Europe and Chennai, believes in art engaged in reality issues, in her presence in it and in sharing it with people. Hence, her practice combines a diversity of contemporary methods including performance in public spaces and interactive efforts. The event at Sumukha consisted of several works done in a number of media arranged into an environment that acted on the viewer's reflection and sensitivities over a layered simultaneity.

Titled "Partum Subvertio - to bear to destroy", it spoke about female foeticide through the recurring metaphor of the pitcher plant whose graceful, sensuous flowers may shock by their carnivorous nature.

Very effective was the video which combined drawings of pregnant womb-like flowers and camera images of the artist moving slowly in a foetal position. Its graphic element complemented finely the cinematic translucency making the gravity of the feel tender. These qualities came through with yet more strength and subtlety in the series of light boxes with permeating motifs of plants and ultrasound pictures of babies. The use of film referring to the material of sex determination has its own connotation, while lighting it from behind heightened, sharpened the form and its evocativeness.

One appreciated also the paintings with pitcher plant blossoms bulging and sagging under their content which acquired a plastic, corporeal sensation but whose slender, sinuous outlines came close to a hard, menacing ornament. The almost lyrical lightness of hues under dripping surface filters gradually revealed a sinister, uncertain aura. The quite similarly handled seed-resembling embryo paintings under the thick, cracking gold and silver pigments offered a premonition of perilous if precious life.

It would have been difficult, however, to read an allusion to dowry as intended by the artist. In some cases, especially in the paintings contrasting the assured vivacity of temple goddesses and pitcher plants, the fatal flowers may not have has enough evocativeness, so making the works turn slightly design-like.

The same can be said about the otherwise beautiful installation with a mass of such flowers made of black surgical gauze and cast shadows. There was another video work there with a school girl reading out a text about female infanticide and her friend reading it in reverse.

A moving concept as a gesture of defiance and hope, it nevertheless was perhaps hard to grasp without an introduction. Despite such reservations the artist should be admired for her commitment as well as for the maturity and sometimes for the striking impact of her works.

Joy in nature
The images of Seema Chaturvedi (CKP, February 4 to 10) aim at an evocation of innocent human joy and lyrical moods amid the vibrant expanses of nature, in communion with birds, flowers, flowing water and greenery.
Although one may empathise with the warmth and simplicity of the artist and appreciate her desire to bring out lively, serene pulses of the atmosphere, the way she goes about it appears somewhat simplistic. Her figures of women and men balance between a graceful mannerism and a half-hearted expressive distortion. The former aspect of the style is particularly evident in the cute profiles that still remember Husain's. This becomes overdone further in the outline drawings whose character repeats a dated and far too familiar formula.

Designing lines and colours
‘Prathama’ was the debut presentation of paintings by students of the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath's college held at the venue (February 7 to 12), accompanied by a selection from their teacher Muni Mohan's work.
If the mentor's style offers consummate skills in images of pleasantly sensuous, pensive ladies among somewhat patterned grounds, his students seem to be relying on yet more old-fashioned sources of inspiration and the
idea of composition as stylised design. This could be noticed in works echoing of academic realism with ethnic tones (Sreenath), in abstract dynamism (Navya) as well as in schoolish absorptions of Cubist (Nandini K.S.) and Pointillist (R. Monish) motifs.

A play between linear contours and strong hues preoccupy as much the K.G. Subramanyan-influenced figuration (Sohini Chattopadyay) as that using abstracted simplification (Swetha Jadhav), softly expressionist (Shruthi Suresh) or realistic-surreal (G Prasanna Kumar) modes as well as idioms with folk-naïve (R Poornashree) elements or planar and facial overlaps (Preethi N Rao).

Random mix
The "Karvvikka" exhibition at the CKP (January 24 to 27) collected a rather random gamut of conventionally pleasant and downright amateurish paintings without any attempt at connecting them theme-wise or aesthetically. Shyam Nadh's narrative scenes based on old Kerala temple murals do have a certain nostalgic-decorative charm but participate in what by now has become a popular fashion. Sandhya Sirsi's figuration depends on another well-known paradigm of a modernist lineage and easily nice design. The light, sketchily realistic scenes with people by Mohan V. too had a sense of déjà vu.

Two rhythms
The paintings of Madhu Madappally and Jolly M Sudhan, who showed together at the CKP (January 18 to 23), seem to display the artists' need for an evocation of expansive rhythms that pervade the world. Jolly Sudhan looks at the sky turbulent under rain clouds that reverberate in water waves. What comes through, yet, is a composition-focussed mass of small, quite repetitively applied patterns, the effect of it remaining on the surface. Madhu Madappally, too, is sensitive to organic and atmospheric pulses that relax somewhat under his brush as well as find an echo in the corporeal feel of his men and women with a slightly eerie tone. He, too, nevertheless, gives in to the temptation of design shifting geometric planar segments above scenery stretches. The effect is perhaps forced and again surface-bound.