Artist Akitit Narayanan’s geometric abstraction world is on performance in Chennai

Akitit Narayanan’s performance on performance. Photo Credit: Gauri S

Akitit Narayanan strongly believes that art cannot be translated into words, and so he shoots a friendly instructions on me: “Don’t do exaggeration! I have nothing to say, I am only to show here”. It is almost strange that an experienced artist, one of the pioneers of the Madras Art Movement, and a cute student of KCS Panikikar, will throw their hands into the air, to say that they have no specific meaning to say that they widely appreciated, gathered and studying geometric abstraction. In fact, he is not very eager for the word. “Any painting can be explained in any way. I like the form and so I develop forms.”

Mani Ratnam and Artists | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Sporting a sociable smile, 86-year-old, Lalit Kala Academy today, which is surrounded by about 150 works of art-for collectors, friends and sour-one partial reinforcement from their own collections, which charts their dolls as from the 1950s to the 2020s. The large (and small) abstract, sometimes linear and sometimes, takes the walls to its first single show in Chennai with a clear bias for order in chaos. Displays, Sans Chronology, in its revered body of decades, have a window – the impact from music to printmaking and tantric art is unnatural and ‘noticeable unnatural’.

Kerala-born artists, who received a diploma in painting from Government College of Art and Craft, Madras in 1961, were one of the then-Yuva promising artists who established Cholamandal Artist village in Madras on the sea shore.

Artist Akitit Narayanan | Photo Credit: Gauri S

“At the end of our studies in India, Panicar insisted that we look back in India, and look at our own traditions. They organized tourism in East, North and West, so that we can be asked to understand a cross section of Indian art through temple and cave art,” they remember. Many of his ornamental tasks came to this time – figs, not in human form – dating back back at the beginning of his practice in the 1950s. Paul Seven, William Candinsky and Rembrant, have played their role in Narayanan’s life through various stages of his career. He remembers putting these pictures in books in the Conmara Library.

Narayanan went to Paris on a government scholarship, where he studied painting under Jean Barthole, and engraved under the Lucian COTU in the école des beaux-Quarts from the end of 1967 to 1970. Going to Paris, where he still lives, was a twist in his life and artistic practice. For a young Narayanan, which was only a theoretical knowledge of European art, the exposure and interaction in the city helped to realize how art is for life. With the dilemma of where and how to start on a large scale after a year, his practice began.

“When I went to Paris, I completely changed. I went into linear and geometric abstraction,” he remembers. It all started with two forms – the fundamental symbolic form of the triangle and square, which he divides later, and, to date, uses.

One of the essence of performance. Photo Credit: Gauri S

Panicker used to send him a curious inquiry and sometimes taking a letter of presentation advice. Narayan remembers, “He will write while asking, ‘What are you doing there? You are in Europe and you will know what is happening in India too. Compare them, and do something on your own!” This inspired me to think about doing something different. “Although his canvas reminds of a kind of rhythmic chanting, which can be given for tantric art, he removes them from any religious meaning.” I think I have done everything that I could do with him. “

In front of the attractive short water color, it is difficult that there is no colleague in the intensity of the elements of Narayanan. He reminds us of his realization, “There is nothing that you can explain in words that you cannot do through images. It is difficult to explain a feeling of happiness.”

One thousand universe Lalit Kala Academy is on performance from 11 am to 7 pm till 15 April and in the artworld. ,Sarla’s Kala Kendra, Alwarpet, 16 April to 10 May, from 10.30 am to 6.30 pm.