First Impressions

Headlights for sunken eyes,radiators evocative of wounded ribs and a landscape of used automobile parts that reveal the grotesque realities of Nehruvian India. Surely,the politics of Hyderabad-based artist,Surya Prakash’s ‘junkyard phase’ establish him has an artist with a rare distinctive voice. But Prakash doesn’t want to be bound by any particular “phase” of his career. “There was a time when I was preoccupied with used cars and then there was a phase during which dried leaves inspired me. For me these were just mediums of expression. Once they exhausted their meanings,I moved on to something else. There artistic vision,however,was always the same,” says Prakash who is in the city to launch a book on him Abstract Reality: The Art of Surya Prakash and also for the inauguration of a retrospective exhibition of his works at Gallery Sanskriti.

The book written by art critic Shiladitya Sarkar,celebrates Surya Prakash as a “consummate painter with a distinctive visual diction”. It tells us how the painter interpreted Impressionism in his own distinctive style. It tells us how Prakash’s version of a lily pond,though a clear tribute to Claude Monet’s Water-Lilies,is a distinctive piece of work. “I was inspired by Monet’s works and I decided to build a lily pond for myself near my house,” says Prakash. Like Monet,Prakash too was mesmerized in which light played on the leaves of the lily plant. The result— a lyrical series of paintings which is characterized by browns and reds rather than the soothing blues and greens of Monet’s work.

Then of course,there are his subliminal landscapes. Sarkar claims that Prakash’s landscapes “are not filtered pictures of nostalgia”. “They do not depict a particular place in his memory. This sublime ambiguity offers the viewer a chance to create his or her own narrative,” says Sarkar.

But more importantly,Abstract Reality: The Art of Surya Prakash,tells us about the role that Prakash played in creating “creating interactive platforms for artists across the country”. “Through art camps,seminars and exhibitions,and his invaluable contributions in shaping the aesthetic values of two scientific research organization,Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (Hyderabad) and LV Prasad Eye Institute,Prakash has shaped the art milieu of this country,” says Sarkar.

The book also highlights the fact that Prakash is one of those gifted artists whose works are the result of the perfect marriage between form and content. “His art does away all apparent references to the objective world to evoke a multiplicity of meanings,” insists Sarkar. The book,which has already been launched at Hyderabad,Mumbai,Delhi and Vadodara will now be launched in Chennai and Bangalore. “We are also launching it in Munich,London and New York,” informs Prakash.

Surya Prakash’s retrospective exhibition is on at Gallery Sanskriti till January 17 (Sundays closed)