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How describe what Shovin has done in his recent paintings? One way of

putting it would be to say that he has razed the strict order of concrete

blocks of high rises and such, to an absorbing mystery –perhaps a sci-fi

one. His vast structures appear tumbling, as though in a quake, and yet

they hold on. He would not let them topple. Much suburban built up

spaces can be infinitely dull for those who have to spend their lives over

there. With nature gone, animals and birds are forlorn. They almost go

neurotic. Thus what the artist does to this modern day ambience—a

completely man-made one –is naughty. He drives a point home, so as

to humanize us by making the metros’ lordliness seem vulnerable to

incalculable forces. The solidity of a reality is now shown prone to being

merrily played with by factors beyond computation. In this way he

produces suspense, the feel of absurdity, and even a bit of surreal terror.

What he tells us, or what he compels us to confront, is a situation with two

impossible alternative expressions: this world cannot be a safe one, for

how can God’s world look so crazy? And secondly, that the way in which

we are accustomed to seeing the real world is either not true or not

exclusively true.So that Shovin’s intent is to poke fun at an illusion.

“Oh see, this world, even when supported by the immense authority of

building sciences, by mathematics, by geometry, and indeed by the forms

of our own minds, is a fooling. Ha ha-ha!

At any rate Shovin’s compositions are bounded at one extreme by the

regular polyhedrons, the strenuous streometric forms, by spheres, by an

infinite number of planes, by thermomorphic patterns, or also birds,

canines, felines, fish, spectral human shapes etc. etc.

These patterns can transform themselves into squares, or they dissolve

into waves, losing their identities. There are successive transformations. A

universe in flux, standing in a state of uncertainty. It is, as it were, every

detail can metamorphose into oddity.

So such are the artist’s animate as also inanimate personae. He gives us

hints of the situation, deadpan. A wonky world, but it holds valuable

lessons as much as it is a visual delight “Do not be lazy, get to know that

all things can change their forms”. So he seems to imply.

This same trace of mockery is meant really to evoke certain humility in

our life responses. He is toying with the old problem of true and false.The

work therefore instantly demolishes our certainties, or things that we

know only from the outside.

To repeat, this art tries to wake us up to the basic strangeness impending

behind taken for granted monolith structures, whether grand buildings or

gross dogmas. The only sound axiom being that there are other truths behind the one truth. If you do not pay

heed to this, you may be brushed aside by events. So, if on one plane, this work offers pleasure and amusement,

on another it is serious business.Included in this exhibition are also the artist’s digital prints, as those based on

India’s ancient caves. These are sober, exactingrecreations of a world now gone away. But what a job he has

done with his classical structure in pure white! Here we observe the artist become an architect or a landscape

choreographer. He does all these digitals not lightly but in good faith, in keeping with the spirit of art.

KESHAV MALIK
POET & ART CRITIC

 

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