| Bala began life in a village in the
outskirts of Madras. An accidental conversation in a train led him to
the Government College of Fine arts, Madras. Journeys, rather than arrival
points, would continue to resonate in his work. Now, less than 7 years
later, Bala has travelled through several countries, staying for more
than 6 months in 7 locations. Although Bala desists from drawing attention
to the above, I believe his international experiences have allowed him
to leapfrog trend that continue to engage his contemporaries.
This brief period has spawned a significant and daring body of work
that seems equally at comfort in sculpture, printmaking, and mixed media.
The materials employed vary in form and content, moving between, plaster,
silkscreen prints and paper relief. And ideas seem to reach out like
sepulchral plaster arms and bodies frozen in walls. There are big swipes
being taken here, but there are strong threads that hold these works
together.
From a purely Indian perspective, it appears as if Bala has leaped out
from the confines of his context, and landed squarely outside the strict
formalism of the modernists…. These works are lyric celebrations
that delight in aesthetic imbalance and challenge our ways of viewing.
This is clearly not a conceptual country, but a quiet move-back towards,
say, the humanism of Joseph Beuys – an early influence….
Each physical work is a journey, which leads you to retrace the artist’s
steps.
And what you are left with is not merely the physical work, but your
reaction to it.... where the negative space in an excavation leads to
a corollary.... Action leads to reaction, or, as Bala puts it, “without
Shiva, there’s no Shakti”. (Jasjiv Sahney, an excerpt) |
