Amid the real and surreal...

Monica Arora

It is believed that a person who is well-travelled is well-versed with multi-cultural influences and, eventually, his or her work speaks a multi-dimensional language. As contemporary artist Nataraj Sharma articulates, “I have always been interested in mixing media, in mixed media, in mixing every damned thing up.”

Nataraj Sharma was born in the south Indian city of Mysore in Karnataka, but thanks to his father’s restlessness, the artist grew up in various cities across the world, mainly Ethiopia, Zambia and the United Kingdom. These experiences enabled the artist to understand and appreciate the dynamics of being uprooted from one’s homeland and the complexities of race, culture, language, dress, art, architecture and various other parameters that eventually divide and define the human race.

It comes as no surprise then that he is adept at mixing media, wherein he straddles the diverse worlds of installation, painting and digital art, drawing, sculptures and graphic art with equal ease. He takes this duality to another level with his creations as he explores the fine line that separates a state of suspended reality from stark practicality; of the tangent and the surreal; of the creations which are manmade and hence driven by technology versus the creations of nature, which are driven purely by a process of growth and evolution, untouched by the human mind or hand. That stark difference then forms the essence of all his creations and compels the viewer to ponder over this dichotomy of the various spaces, which his creativity inhabits.

Interestingly, his latest solo show at the majestic Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi is titled Swimmer’s Manual and Other Stories. The titular art work is a magnificent multimedia canvas. It is a breathtaking image of a swimming pool area bustling with swimmers in the water and outside, ready to take the plunge, in various stages of readiness. There are works spanning some important business establishments such as the Adani Thermal Power Plant and the Jaypee Cement Factory, besides personal portraitures such as The Hockey Player or Kharkhana or City on a River, thereby encompassing a real world surrounded by imaginative settings, a juxtaposition which has come to define the artist’s ouvre. The show is on till April 6.

The finely etched lines, the magical use of earthy tones, so real and yet so imaginative, the clarity of visuals, the sheer size of some of the artworks literally occupying entire walls in the gallery are so evocative and thought-provoking that they force the audience to wonder as to how his world spans so many dimensions at the same time and highlight both historical progress and contemporary industrialised societies. That is the beauty and the irony that runs through his articulations. As André Breton, the French writer, poet and surrealist theorist wrote, “Nothing that surrounds us is object, all is subject.”