Indian Resonances & ‘The Colours of Suriname
-
Upload
milton-drepaul -
Category
Documents
-
view
220 -
download
0
Transcript of Indian Resonances & ‘The Colours of Suriname
-
8/3/2019 Indian Resonances & The Colours of Suriname
1/6
INDIAN RESONANCES IN THE COLOURS OF SURINAME
Every year, during the month of June, in Suriname, India glows iridescently.
Its a time when the peoples of this small, yet richly diverse, multi-lingual
(including Hindi), multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society an exemplar of
harmony in the Americas pause and reflect on Indian-ness: its generalcharacter and historicity, new and emerging dimensions, and the role it has
played in the shaping of the plurivocal Sranang-persona. This year, on June
5th, the commemorative day marking the arrival of the first indentured
labourers in Suriname from India, a unique art exhibition opened its doors at
the prestigious Fort Zeelandia Museum in the capital city, Paramaribo.
Featuring works of Surinamese art luminaries - Ruben Karsters, Anand Binda,
and George Ramjiawansingh - Colours of Suriname was sponsored by the
Embassy of the Republic of India; and Indias Minister of Overseas Affairs &
Culture, the Honourable Vayalar Ravi, traveled to this distant republic in
Amazonia to declare the exhibition officially open.
George Ramjiawansingh
Astounding artistic versatility plus clear, prolific, self-assured expressionism
underscore George Ramjiawansinghs polychromatic display and contribution
towards The Colours of Suriname exhibition. Art is the expression of the
inner self, the artist says. Its one of the last real freedoms left to humans inthe modern world.
George Ramjiawansingh is the youngest of the three artists. The themes of his
works range from pure abstract conceptions, slices of rural and urban life,
ideational representations, social statements, nature scenes of Surinamese flora
and fauna, and an array of creations that capture the plurality of the national
milieu. In this exhibition, the artist displays works on canvas, sculpted and
welded metallic installations, and stunning, live, decorative floral installations.
The artists abstract panels, Natural History & Love, Meditation Music, andPaint your Internal Images, feature eight phenomenally effective and
affective works which pull gallery viewers into the wonder of a space odyssey.
Be it the Milky Way or otherwise, the artist explores albeit fleetingly a slice
of the origin of things in a glimmering moment of primordial time. As the
viewer moves from one panel to another s/he approaches the void and that
-
8/3/2019 Indian Resonances & The Colours of Suriname
2/6
first light, the big-bang, from which it all emerged in time and space.
If one were to step back and take a birds eye view of his works on exhibition
the notion of an unseen and or emerging light source hovers about many of
Ramjiawansinghs creations. His massive floral creation entitled Love You,Mother Nature which captures the rich, lush life with its hidden possibilities
in the rainforest the heartland of Suriname contains, as a backdrop, a
massive sun-circle, 9 feet in diameter. Striking indeed! And the more one
contemplates this recurrent leitmotiv in the artists work, one knows that this
son of the Indian diaspora at one and the same time celebrates the beauty and
richness of Amazonia, plus he secretly pro-naams to Surya, and pays unseen
obeisance to Gaea Ma smilingly radiant in the rich heliconia petal spray,
flowing water, and bamboo grasses growing amid the rocks, earth and stones.
In the open fresh air on the rooftop of the Fort Zeelandia Museum inParamaribo, on the bank of the Suriname River, can any aesthete with a
cultivated sensibility miss the hidden spiritual landscape from which this artist
draws his inspiration and creativity? With his rich splash of bright, variegated
tropical colours, Ramjiawansijngh successfully takes his viewers on a stroll
through Suriname, and into his own art-scape profoundly fascinated with
expressions of urbane reality combined with that which is primordial,
expansive, and timeless.
Anand Binda
Anand Binda is no stranger to international art galleries, including India. The
last exhibition of his paintings on the subcontinent was in 2005 at the
Chitrakala Parishuth Art Gallery in Bangalore, south India. The themes of his
paintings, which includes oils and acrylic works on canvas, watercolours, and
lino-cuts, can be broken into: Trees and Rivers, Portraits, Horses,
Landscapes, Birds, Rapids, Dancers and Figures.
Stylistically, at first glance, his works show strong influences of French
impressionism. Objects are not to be presented as they appear rather, its a
special elucidation, or should one use the word, illumination, in Bindas case,which the creative work reveals. Painting is a conscious journey into the
unknown, the artist says. This telling, succinctly-stated credo implies a
conscious exploratory dimension in each of his paintings. Indeed a visual
review of the artists works Trees and Rivers reveals them as etudes on
canvas.
-
8/3/2019 Indian Resonances & The Colours of Suriname
3/6
Without surrendering to the dream-like world of the surrealists or new-age neo-
surrealists, and not embracing banal realism either, Binda achieves the curious
effect of a fusion of both worlds. Objects of reality are there, but back-
grounded. His concern seems to be one of consciously tearing away two or
three veneered layers of common sensual experience and reality to reveal anunseen hidden world which is visibly present beneath the palpable. And the
finished effect at one and the same time is the recognizable re-moulded
through the deft spell of the artists gifted imagination and masterful
execution.
Critics in the past have remarked that Bindas paintings seem to pulsate no
doubt responding to the dual presence: the clearly recognizable and its
revelatory reformulation reshaped on canvas. Undoubtedly, objects do appear
energized and vibrant on his canvases at times even approaching Turner-
esque radiance. However, the repetitive nature of this effect consistentlyapplied across a range of themes suggests that perhaps Anand Bindas
achievement is his creation, development and successful refinement of a
technique that effectively transports his viewers beyond the visible, but to the
detriment and loss of neither the original natural object nor his artistic re-
mould. According to the artist, Its all about the harmonious balance between
emotions and intellect.
By nature a deep thinker, Bindas paintings reflect strong cognitive activity
as if the artist has successfully defined a new course in the creation of beauty.
His successive launches into impressionistic reality seem to have yielded a
unique strand of creativity which strikingly stands out in the Colours of
Suriname exhibition: Many of his works with the exception of his portraits -
appear as sliced jewels. It is as if Bindas world of creative etudes are
progressively seen through the lens of a jeweled prism and, in the end, art-
aesthetes move in his imaginative consciousness on canvases looking at objects
of sense through diamond-prisms of light.
Ruben Karsters
Ruben Karsters, the eldest of the three Surinamese artists, minces no words
about the subjects of his creative passions. All are solidly grounded in
objective sensate reality and presented in equally indeed strikingly lucid
terms. His art is as classical as it gets. Art is verisimilitude, to invoke the
Greek concept re-energized in 18th century language. And Surinames most
respected portraitist is unapologetic about his mimetic style each piece deftly
executed with grace and finesse. The artist, in his aesthetic credo, has an
-
8/3/2019 Indian Resonances & The Colours of Suriname
4/6
infinite range of creative possibilities within the palpable world of objects
and so capturing the expressiveness of an individual subject, and reflecting
through his creativity both what is strikingly individual and essential to the
subjects character is all in all for the 65 year old artist.
Many at home and abroad - familiar admirer and first-time gallery viewer -
place Karsters in a class by himself. The Indian Minister of Overseas Affairs
& Culture, the Honourable Vayalar Ravi, a first-time viewer in Paramaribo, at
the opening of the Colours of Suriname Exhibition, reminisced about Indias
world-famous author and painter S.M. Hoessein, when he saw Karsters work.
Genuinely acknowledged as an autodidact, Karsters, at the age of seven, was an
acknowledged wonder. So impressed were senior artists of the time, at the
tender age of 12, they drafted him into their coterie. Before his fourteenth
birthday, at the request of a Dutch amateur artist, he began teaching art, free of
charge, to children between the ages of 8 to 13. At 20, young Ruben departedon a scholarship for the Netherlands where he formally studied art for seven
years.
A visitor to his private artistic sanctum an attic chamber perched atop his
one-flat family dwelling and accessible by a flight of spartan wooden steps -
treads with care in recognition that this environment has been purged of all
thats non-artistic. The artists lifestyle cut to the chase. Only essentials
there are no superfluities or excesses. In this sanctum of Apollo and his muses
- a veritable gallery of expressive faces, sensitive nude studies, and images
executed in multi-media formats many framed, others on canvas, some in
progress, others near completion but each and every one fastidiously
executed with the care that sometimes engages the artists creative powers 15
hours a day the visitor senses that the very particles of air one breathes in this
space have been sanitized and re-vivified by the goddess of art and beauty
herself.
Its quite simple, he says, the serious student must first learn to see the
object of art and beauty as it truly is. And so, drawing comes first. In the
beginning, the untrained eye fails to discern many subtleties about any object.
Karsters has spent the better part of sixty years seeking to perceive objects in
ever-deepening clarity to the point of seeking out ever-deeply every subtle,
hidden nuance of tone, colour, shade and shadow ever-present in the world of
objective reality. This is the devout passion of Ruben Karsters artistic
consciousness. The extent of his penetrative vision and the gift of his
-
8/3/2019 Indian Resonances & The Colours of Suriname
5/6
reproductive capacity are truly remarkable and rarely seen these days in the
world of visual arts. Given his obsession with light and shadows, some art
critics compare him to his 17th century namesake, Rubens curiously, of
Dutch-Flemish origins. Watching him train and guide gifted students even as
an Eskimo easily perceives twenty different shades of white, Karsters visualawareness of gradations of hues, light and shades have penetrated to non-
human levels.
With his fusillade of techniques honed over many years of successful
experimentation, its a marvel to visit him when hes consummately engaged in
creating his masterpieces. Contemporary gallery viewers in India will be
intrigued with his three contrastive studies of Kareena Kapoor. They lend
themselves to a fascinating contemplation of this artists obsession with
technique and execution: one study, fully executed using the gray scale; the
second, in full-colour; and the third, a multi-media creation with the modernstar in traditional Indian garb. The portrait study of Kapoor is complimented
with the Karsters take on popular singer, Himesh Reshammiya, in a cap, of
course, and likewise, Jawarhalal Nehru, Indias first Prime Minister.
The work entitled Mohan, Martin, Malcolm, Mandel: Matajis 4 Ms will
undoubtedly enchant aesthetes on the sub-continent. Its a nostalgic reflective
study of four masters of politics by the master of art himself. The glowing
liberated faces of Mohandas Gandhi and Nelson Mandela appear above the
contemplative, serious almost troubled - busts of Martin Luther King and
Malcolm X, the American freedom fighters, also men of colour. Indeed,
gazing to his left, the beaming, joyous face of the Mahatma, the apostle of
peace, clad in white the son of India and father of the modern independence
movement appears to have inoculated and infected his dancing counterpart,
Nelson Mandela; both freedom fighters, who ironically were dramatically
pitted at differing periods against entrenched Dutch supremacy and interests in
southern Africa.
Life-like beauty, touching simplicity, sensitive charm such are the key
signatures of Ruben Karsters creativity. He is a living, embodied instantiation
of the genius of a modern renaissance master in Suriname.
When I was aesthetically satiated and finally appeased to leave the Fort
Zeelandia Museum on Indian Arrival Day in Suriname, I inwardly mused:
Its amazing, though oceans away, how the memory of the ancient land of
Bharata has been reignited with refreshing vitality through these three gifted,
-
8/3/2019 Indian Resonances & The Colours of Suriname
6/6
creative intelligences.
August 2007
Paramaribo, Suriname
All rights reserved
Written by Ivan A. Khayiat, M.A.
Expressly for Indian Resonances & The Colours of Suriname ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyrights Ruben Karsters, April 2009