Painting exhibitions

Painting exhibitions

The two ongoing exhibitions in Auroville are all about the ‘inner world’ of their creators. Gallery Square Circle at Bharat Niwas hosts Painting Exhibition by a duo, oddly called “Shadow Brothers”. The other exhibition, by Hélèle Gagnon, is on in Pitanga till 11th September.

Hélèle Gagnon is from Montreal. Her small format paintings persuade us to view them at close range. In the words of this artist they are “a reflection of the inner eye rather than of the physical sense…” To say that this painter is motivated by her meditations which are a source of her strength and art is quite right. Yet more correctly, the act of painting itself is meditation & consecration to the artist. Her paintings are observations of inner movements perceived as a practice 'of bringing light into darkness'. Hélèle believes that the interactive movements of the five elements vary infinitely to organise the manifest world of form. They constitute the base for developing her visual repertoire. She plays with various elements; forms, moods of light, strength of colour “as the alchemist transforms fires to bring out the unknown that dwells inside him."

Her language is austere: mostly basic forms in achromatic scheme, often circles in unflattering white and black, juxtaposed to form mandalas. In this display the rarer figurative works are in colour, but it is not a footloose palette. It is a select range of warm salmon pinks grading into golden orange hue, light blues and other greys. Brown, too,is sparingly used, as in paintings titled The cross and Aspiration. The colours bear on the Sri-Aurobindonian symbolism to a discernible extent but do not appear commonplace like over-repeated cliché. Ms Gagnon holds her experience within her inner awareness and sketches rapidly the first visual, later to deliberate upon it in communicable form. “They are not visions”, she quickly helps, but an ' inner research' .

While Hélèle Gagnon researches her inner world for light, the “shadow brothers” look for their pictorial universe in the dark of their subconscious. Their universe is actually chaotic. Some of the bigger canvases may at times have simply an abrupt phrase in English or an unstructured, infantile doodle. Other times the canvas may be over-painted, literally painted over, possibly suggesting nothing more than an agitated impulse. Sometimes there are figures, some drawn with quite some practised ease of an art student. To one of the artists, they need not make any sense except while he is in the process of painting them. “ It is for the viewer to discern a 'meaning' out of my paintings”, says one shadow brother.

The poster announcing this show reads, “ To whomsoever it may concern, All those who happen to walk a few minutes with our shadow, will find themselves flying with us into the canvas. - Shadow brother's 2010” If one does venture, he may most likely find himself not quite “flying” but rather floating, with no sense of ground to bring home the point which those painting may want to make. Putting it like that may seem harsh, but that is more or less what the artists intend.

Can not utter hopelessness, if it must be expressed at all, be expressed differently? One wonders uneasily.