An Artist in Love

TVasudev’s paintings and drawings offer a refreshing counterpoint to the current demand that artists, like manufacturers, rapidly and continually deliver something “new” and “different” in how their work engages the world. His experiments seem to be located in a space distant from the breathless pace of the imagined exigencies of commerce, to emerge from a process internal to himself. His approach is akin to that of the classical musician who allows the raga to unfold him as its medium of expression. A leisurely discipline is in evidence.

Vasudev’s orientation affords him a sheltering structure with plenty of room for play. Within and across his work in different media we see an oscillation between abstraction and figuration with much of the work lying in between, as abstract shapes turn out to be teeming with forms, some merely hinted at, others fully realised. In his work for this exhibition Vasudev has developed texture as a kind of third dimension. Although he has for some years nowbeen building up his canvases with thick layers of white paint which he then gouches , scrapes, smoothes, furrows and overlays with colour and form, in the recent period he has taken this technique much further. The jagged and undulating canvas is no longer a mere surface but a topographical feature integral to the drama of the painting. Vasudev uses textures to convey not just solidity but also movement. The sculpted layers represent land, mound or mountain; they also signify the whirl in which all things coexist. And as air takes form as sound, the textures evoke its vibration.

Vasudev’s works have always conjured a joyful, sensuous world in which humans, animals, trees and the elements enthusiastically commingle. Heads, trees, mountains, monkeys have recurred as motifs. Vasudev handles them rather like a musician would a note to embellish, emphasise, suggest new affiliations and invoke a variety of moods. The works in this exhibition achieve this in two contrasting ways: through an enhanced texturing of the canvas and by means of the deceptively simple beguiling line in his drawings. The range and energy of the work presented affirms that Vasudev’s remains an artist in love with his world.

– Lata Mani