Surendran Nair:

Description

Neti, Neti includes eleven large oil paintings on canvas. Visually, the paintings stand apart from most European and American traditions, though a viewer unfamiliar with Nair's process might mistake them as falling vaguely within some kind of surrealist lineage. In fact, rather than shutting off his discursive mind to channel aspects of his unconscious, Nair proceeds at an admittedly glacial pace in carefully constructing the intellectual underpinnings of his selected imagery and scenarios. The current exhibition was carefully pieced together over a three year period, with an acute awareness of the artist's background and interest in advancing his art in the context of a specifically American audience.

The title of the exhibition Neti, Neti refers to the Hindu text, the BrahadAranyaka Upanishad, and is Nair's first solo show in the United States. Nair's myths are drawn or extrapolated from Greek, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain or Islamic sources, some rooted in political observations or classic dramaturgy, particularly Artistophanes' The Birds. Nair describes his sources and inventions as "corollary mythologies," and they take the forms of a visual iconography uniquely his own. The paintings provide windows into an endless web of narratives, as if a grand and complex epic is unfolding in the mind of the artist and such painting—portholes with their playful riddling titles are our only access, snippets of plot and characters. Evident in the iconography, the characterization of his brightly painted actors, is Nair's lifelong affinity for the all night theatrical traditions of Kathakali, a form descended from classical Sanskrit drama played out in Kerala, where Nair was born and raised.

More Info

Link

http://www.freynorris.com/docs/Frey-Norris-Neti-Neti-2010_ev...