| SAMSARA |
| SUFFERING |
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| Journey from Samsara to Nirvana | ||||||
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CRITICAL REVIEWS |
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DR. ALKA PANDE |
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For last year's words belong to last year's language -T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding |
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According to Arnold Hauser, art always, “strives to be the object of immediate vision, unmitigated sensual impressions and concrete experiences” All works of art are the end product of an intense struggle, born out of a need to articulate one's personal experience, which might or might not have reached a definitive end. This struggle assumes the form of a dialectic between the spontaneous and deeply subjective artistic “inspiration” and the binding reality of existing modes of expression. Every artistic generation has struggled against these antimonies of the past and the present. There has been a constant need to introduce innovations in artistic language to help describe the immediacy of the current moment. |
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As the world progresses, cultural and social values inevitably change, for change is the only constant. With this change the focus of the artist, in every generation, continues to shift to things which are relevant to his social milieu. From Hogarth's commitment towards the industrial revolution to Cezanne's preoccupation with modes of perception, a wide variety of personal engagements are available to us. In our world today, we can see a similar struggle on the part of artists to find new systems of approach to express their experiences. With the advent of globalization and liberalization of economies, the exchange of ideas has begun to take place at a phenomenal rate. Media and in particular, digital technologies have altered our relationship to the material world. Language, lifestyles even cultures are responding to these inventions and hence, taking new shape. The availability of new media, materials and technologies has brought about a number of innovations in the form and framing of each artwork. There are now, new frontiers of craft, decorative arts and design, where the boundaries among creative arts are becoming increasingly blurred. There is a fusion of different art forms which has given birth to a new language. A reliance on interdisciplinary skills in collaboration with heterogeneous materials brings about a new dynamism. | |
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Arjuna, in his work, displays a similar passion towards finding novel methods which respond to his imaginative ideas. His works provide a re-reading of the philosophies of Zen, Hinduism and Buddhism. When the experiences are varied and dense the mode of expression needs to be transmuted accordingly and Arjuna is able to achieve that very successfully. As a product of cross-cultural pollination his ideas and experiences are multi-layered covering a wide spectrum of knowledge, spanning from philosophy to martial arts. He wishes to traverse dimensions and find the perfect synthesis between matter, mind, spirit and energy. A vast gamut of emotions surface in his work, conjoining, intersecting and colliding with each other. It is a constant play between chaos and order, between ideas and emotions. It is an ongoing search, an exploration for a new-fangled world of idioms to express the new emerging matrix. “You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.” Dr. Alka Pande |
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