Deviprasad

An introduction to the artist

2010-06-22T14:58:00.000+05:30

In a recent essay, abstract artist and art critic Swatee Kotwal characterized Deviprasad C Rao as an “artist of the floating world.” This was not a literal reference to the almost exclusively figurative Japanese tradition of Ukiyo-e in technique and style, but rather to its general sensibility, where each work is a reflection of contemporary life, encapsulated as a suspended moment in time.

What gives Rao’s work its visual appeal are the sensual and childlike properties of his line, executed in an intuitive but controlled version of what Breton called “psychic automatism,” modified by the dynamic physicality of techniques derived from his study of Jackson Pollack. The subconsciously inspired imagery of Rao is infused with an unobtrusively Asian sensibility in the positioning of forms. The figures that can be discerned even in his most abstract works are often evocative of tribal art. Compositionally, the works have a zen-like quality.

Sculptor Anish Kapoor said in a recent interview: “What’s interesting about the younger generation is that their forum seems to be global and their engagement seems to be with themselves as artists, rather than with a half-understood concept of what it means to be Indian.” Deviprasad C Rao belongs to this an ascendant international breed of Indian artist.

To date Rao has produced a body of work he calls, “Floating World” in four series. Beyond Barcelona, Buddha, Prescience, and, most recently, Cosmic Clusters.

Beyond Barcelona is the result of Rao’s trip to that city in 2002 and his submergence in the art and architecture of the region. Readily perceived is the stylistic influence the Catalan painters have had on his artistic vision. The product is not actually Barcelona, but the memory and feeling of Barcelona as seen through the eyes of the artist, filtered and translated into his own language. Through the use of light shading contrasted with opaque lines, layering of subtle patterns, and color gradations, he offers his tribute to the city.

Ukiyo-e is sometimes translated as “pictures of the sorrowful world”, an allusion to the pleasure-seeking aspects of daily life as well as the cycles of death and rebirth from which Buddhists seek deliverance. The Buddha series is the expression of Rao’s long-time engagement with Eastern spiritualism, especially Tibetan Buddhism. In these works he consciously exhibits more line control, but the resulting sense of ritualism, detachment and transformation is effected through the pathos of shape rather than line.

In the third series, Prescience, a collection of imaginary city and landscapes inspired by aerial views we still see an exuberance in the movement of line, but there is also the insinuation of a darker element, the foreshadowing of a world at odds with itself. While in some cases the crowded cityscapes call to mind the coziness of a Hundertwasser habitat, they do not possess Hundertwasser’s redemptive quality and convey, by their density and colouring, the damaging effects of industrialisation, pollution and overpopulation. In his newest series, Cosmic Clusters, reverses his aerial perspective, defragmenting his dense imaginary cityscapes, plucking chunks of them and relocating them in negative space, where they float, free of gravity like miscellaneous pieces of a puzzle in a brightly hued universe, created with a heavy layering of colour application. It is a vision of a broken world.

While Rao’s visual lexicon is a constantly evolving hybrid of archetype, popular culture, and prophesy, at the root of his oeuvre lies a discernible ethic: a concern for spirituality and nature, understated, suggesting the possibility of something more substantial.

- Margaret Mascarenhas
(Novelist, Columnist & Collector)

Deviprasad C Rao’s‘Beyond Barcelona’ drawings to be exhibited at Gallery Attic

2008-03-24T23:27:00.004+05:30

PANAJI: 24-March-2008:

Gallery Attic presents ‘Beyond Barcelona Prelude’ drawings by Deviprasad C Rao, a freelance journalist, photographer and now full time painter. The exhibition will begin on 26^th March and will conclude on 15^th April, 2008.

When Deviprasad Rao made a trip to Barcelona, six years ago, he could have hardly envisaged then, how this visit would describe his career. All that he saw and experienced affected him deeply, particularly the Catalan modernists Miro, Klee and architect Gaudi. As to be expected in a young painter what followed was a body of works influenced by these painters titled the “Minutiae Series”. These works were well received for their freshness and charm and contributed to Deviprasad’s career as painter; and set the tone for the drawings exhibited in “Beyond Barcelona Prelude”, which form part of the Beyond Barcelona collection of drawings and canvas works.

At first glance Deviprasad’s drawings look child-like. As in children’s works the objects hang independent of one another and are also what can be described as the calligraphy of a tree, leaf, twigs, fence etc. Here too, he is close to the creed of “Catalanism” which has lent organic life to the stark geometries of cubism and infused into cubist austerities the playful poetics of Surrealist Symbolism.

Swatee Nair, a Goa based artist and art critic, says “I have referred to Deviprasad as an “Artist of the Floating World”. And although he retains the allure of Alice in Wonderland and a rabbit going down a hole, in the present drawings one gets the impression of looking through glass of a skyscraper – a bird’s eye view of what looks like the psychogeographical map of the naked city sprawling below.”

END

NOTE: For more details please visit his website http://www.deiprasad.com .

Beyond Barcelona Prelude

2008-03-24T22:59:00.007+05:30

In the first decade of 1900’s modernists drew on the ‘primitive’, ‘the child’, and the ‘insane’ as figures of creative genius unfettered by civilization. At this time the focus on schizophrenia and the publication of “L’Artchezfous’ (1907) and then ‘Artistry of Mentally Ill : A contribution to the Psychology and Psychopathology of Configuration’ (1922) which pursued this line of inquiry was certainly provocative to the Modernists, especially the Catalan group.

At this point it is important to mention that for years Deviprasad has taught art to children, and is confident in its therapeutic benefits to the disabled and mentally challenged. It is equally important to take into consideration his method of working. Deviprasad says he works spontaneously, moving freely around the work, building it up in the process intuitively. In this context, Miro, a painter to whom Deviprasad feels greatly in esthetic debt, speaks of probing the unconscious through automatic drawing and expressing the most primal, prelinguistic urges. Avant-garde poet André Breton too in his famous manifesto insists that psychic automation could indeed issue from brush or pencil and the uncontrolled production of automatic drawings and dribbled, dripped and spattered “Cheam pictures”.

The “line” for Deviprasad, is of utmost importance. An introduction to Brice Marden spurred him to explore his ‘line’ deligently filling up stacks of sketchbooks. In the recent drawings the line is more assured while maintaining its original impulse. The work has also acquired a certain density lacking in the earlier. Here, the imagery tilts towards the edgy and the urban. High voltage wires, factory funnels, tall buildings, darken skyline-- chaotic and crowded. An aircraft flies 9/11 into a skyscraper. What looks like innards of machinery have come to replace open faced flower, seesaws in a children’s park. We are led to examine issues of alienation as he evokes the subjects of the development of military – industrial modernity as a regression to broken functions and disordered drives. A sophisticated refined use of colour also lends to the sense of technology and plastic of this age.

I have referred to Deviprasad as an “Artist of the Floating World”. And although he retains the allure of Alice in Wonderland and a rabbit going down a hole, in the present drawings one gets the impression of looking through glass of a skyscraper – a bird’s eye view of what looks like the psychogeographical map of the naked city sprawling below.

- Swatee Nair
(Artist and Art Critic)
March, 2008

"Beyond Barcelona Prelude" - the drawings exhibition is being held at Gallery Attic, Panjim, Goa between 26th March-15th April 2008. View all drawings displayed at http://www.deviprasad.com

Taare Zameen Par in real life

2008-03-05T01:01:00.002+05:30

31.01.2008 (Visit: http://www.deviprasad.com)

Panaji (PTI): While actor Aamir Khan hogged the arclight and limelight for "Taare Zameen Par", the much-acclaimed movie about dyslexic kids, a Goan painter is quietly helping children afflicted with the learning disability to express their creativity for the last two years.

Aamir garnered accolades for the movie "Taare Zameen Par (TZP)" for sensitive portrayal of a teacher advancing the cause of dyslexic kids, Deviprasad Rao, a young abstract painter, has touched the lives of many such children in Goa, tutoring them for the last two years, allowing ventilation to their creativity through painting.

"Someone told me about the movie and I was so much excited watching it. It was nothing new to me as I have been actively involved with dyslexic kids since August 2005 through an art exploration program", Rao who is associated with Sethu, an NGO working with kids with learning disorders, told PTI.

Drawing yet another similarity between Khan's character in the movie as a teacher who himself suffered from dyslexia in childhood, Rao too conceded of suffering with this problem.

"I was not just dyslexic but also the victim of a pedophile who exploited me for almost three years," Rao said.

Originally hailing from Mangalore (Karnataka), Rao shifted his base to Goa in 2004 and carved a niche for himself as a painter.

"Working with dyslexic children is not an easy job but surely fulfilling because they are more creative than normal children. I pull out their imagination, which they pour on the canvas. It's not just painting. It's a developmental process," he said.

"These children have great potential to become artists, painters, actors. I wish I would have given them more time," Rao, who conducts classes on alternate days, said, adding even other children attend them.

Working from a small flat in Panaji's plush locality, Rao explained how children, who were earlier reluctant to move their fingers manage to move their hand on the paper and canvass after little training.

"I am happy that TZP happened. The movie brought awareness amongst parents and teachers. Now, people come out openly and admit that their child is dyslexic," the 38-year- old painter said.

However, he feels that much more needs to done on this front.

"If any one comes across such issues with their kids they must consult child specialists or experts in dyslexia or approach NGOs working with them in the first place," he said.

"After all innocence has great power. What we need to do is to shower them with compassion, support and encouragement," Rao said.

(Courtesy : Press Trust of India)

The Creative Confluence from Goa

2008-03-05T00:32:00.003+05:30

October, 2007
Kolkata

Sarmistha Maiti reviews an exhibition of three Goan artists in Mon Art Gallerie, Kolkata

They met, they interacted, they enacted. All these seem to be either very meticulously devised or another incredibly interesting coincidence. Well here let's not pierce into the core of this intriguing factor of how they met, rather take our chance to share their experience they have reasoned as the bottom line that has generated the noble cause after they met. Deviprasad C Rao, Suhas Shilker and Swatee Nair – all of them have one thing in common. They are painters and when they met each other from different walks of life in a small town like Goa , they came close to share a common space. They have justified their meeting very logically, “ Goa is small, we would have met any way. We had no choice in the matter.” Manju Sethia of Mon Art Gallerie, Kolkata found these three creative souls out of the ordinary in Goa and decided to showcase their works. Thus, came up the show Three Amigos in Kolkata from October 13-27, 2007 in the premises of the Mon Art Gallerie.

Among the trio, Suhas has a formal art training from Goa College of Art where as Deviprasad is a Commerce graduate and Swatee is an exponent of English Literature. Both Deviprasad and Swatee happen to be journalists but they have chosen to practise art above everything as their first love. The trio has another exciting familiar factor that they are inclined towards abstract art. All three of them have deviated from the lines of figurative representation and effectively chosen not to follow any aspect of the realistic approach yet they have allowed the viewers to build up a discourse with their works without getting swayed away by ambiguity.

In this show, works of Deviprasad have been categorically placed under a single series known as the Minutiae Series . His works have been justifiably put under this title because in a very coherent order he has created the trivia of the imagery with different connotations kept as open texts for the viewers. Apparently the works seem to be unpremeditated and suffer from structural disintegration. But as soon as you are drawn into the picture plane you can sense the symmetry in the flow of the composition and your eyes don't move arbitrarily on the canvas, rather directed in a pattern to go by an order. This interplay of psychology has been trickily developed through child-like imagery and the juxtaposition of fragmented strokes with empty spaces on the picture plane has added the surreal quality in each of the paintings under Minutiae Series . The role of light has been infused in a poetic rhythm and you would love to watch his works repeatedly from different angles.

Swatee's works dwell in conflict and this builds up a personalized metaphor in her Untitled series. The tempo she has created evokes a commotion in random patches of acrylic on distinct shapes of digital images. She has used the latest technique of converting the digitized images on canvas and then added the strokes of real colour. Her paintings bear nodes of despair and a context of viciousness where each of us has been entrapped. The shimmering tinge of light brown, the superfluous yellow ochre in contrast to the darker shades of grey spell out the tension hidden in the perspective and Swatee manipulates these disguised motifs of worldly anguish and identifies them as individualized symbol. In no way she disallows the viewers to react though she could have devised the cause of her working out so in a much more motivating gesture.

Suhas's works are a composite of abstraction, realization and naivety. The child-like quality in the orderly pattern of symbols and colours on the picture plane creates a magical inflow of variable probabilities and calls out for innumerable propositions. He has used complementary colours and most significantly the conical shape over times to converge the suggestions to a specific point. This particular conical shape does relate to the child's creation of mountain top, house roof, tower etc. Suhas has equally used these symbols in randomness but in this case they evoke the process how the natural instinct of life is being jarred by the induced artificiality of the day.

The show brought together three ranges of works from the three amigos but with a common impulse they have safely invoked through abstractions. But had they been a bit more integrative in their approach, their works could have become signifiers related to the temporal beat of the contemporary context. The show has been concluded with deserving appreciation but the promotional response that had been expected from the City of Joy remained a bit low. Yet kudos must go to Mon Art Gallerie to showcase Three Amigos and give these creative minds the opportunity they really owe.

Three Amigos
Deviprasad C Rao, Suhas Shilker and Swatee Nair
October 13 - 27, 2007
Presented by Mon Art Gallerie, Kolkata

Please visit: http://www.deviprasad.com

Bio-Data

2008-03-04T20:41:00.001+05:30

Born : 1970

Native : Mangalore, Karnataka State, India

Presently Living in : Panaji, Goa State, India

Education : B Com. No formal training in Art

Group Shows

• January 19^th-Feb 6^th , 2008 : Ruchika Art Gallery, Goa – titled “Goan Masters – Past, Present & Future

• November, 2007 : Annan Galleria, Helsinki, Finland

• October 13th-27th, 2007 : Mon Art Gallery – Kolkata along with Suhas Shilker and Swatee Nair – titled ‘Thee Amigos’.

• August 1-14, 2007 : Gallery Beyond – Mumbai along with nine other artists from Goa

Solo Exhibitions:

2006

• “Bondage to Freedom” – a drawing and painting exhibition at Art Chamber, Goa

• “Portrait of existance” - a drawing exhibition at Literati, Goa

2005

• “Here to infinity” – Inox Art Lounge, Panaji, Goa

2004

• “Returning to the source” – Dev’s Art Gallery - Goa

2003

• “Chants of a monk” - HSBC Art Gallery by K K Nag Foundation, Pune

• “Experiencing the unknowable” – Oshoworld Galleria – New Delhi

(Please visit ://www.deviprasad.com)

Artist of the floating world

2008-03-04T20:21:00.000+05:30

It is fashionable these days to speak of alternative career and lifestyles. Powerful company directors and CEO’s are giving up boardrooms and have found joy in growing organic vegetables and cheese making. At an age when most men are on the fast track, Deviprasad C Rao, fondly known as Dev, has shifted gears and changed lanes. A BCom graduate, journalist, and IT professional into marketing and public relations, Dev turned his back on this world of updating and upgrading, strategy and networking. He now spends his days painting. And quietly but firmly asserts that he has chosen the way of the artist is the only way for him.

Gustav Flaubert once counseled writers, “be regular and orderly in your life, so that you maybe violent and original your work.” Precise arrangements of graphite, pastels, crayons, pencils, brushes, colours line the walls of his small living and working space. Deviprasad himself is a study in understatement, dressed in chinos and white linen shirts. As Flaubert recognized, the external order of the work space can belie the spontaneity and primitive urges that activate the imagination. Deviprasad’s work has a playfulness that is witty terms of both narrative and of the form. The lines, dots, shapes, squiggles, appear to defy gravity, suspended in space. He is an artist of the floating world.

Born in Koteshwara, a small pilgrim town near Kundapur of Udupi district (Near Mangalore) in Karnataka state (India), his father was art teacher forced to renounce his first love and switch to catering to make ends meet. Deviprasad had a disturbed childhood and recalls with evident pain that poverty necessitated that he be raised by various relatives. At the age of 8 he saw a beautiful painting on a visit to his uncle’s home which he later learnt had been painted by his father. This painting, he says, was a catalyst in his young life. He to paint with keenness using all sorts of material – water colours, oils, pastels, in short, whatever he could get his hands on. Always inclined to the arts, Deviprasad later studied theatre and dramatics and became a ‘Yakshagana’ and Mime performing artist. However, he says, a career in the arts seemed selfish and unrealistic since he considered it his duty to support his family.

Deviprasad was married and has two boys, Devakanta and Mitra. Following a great deal of emotional turbulence in his marriage, he decided to give up his PR consultancy work and head for Goa to make a fresh start. On his arrival in Calangute, he started an art gallery with the help of his cousin. He hoped to secure his financial position and be able to meet his family commitments. Without a safety net he managed to hold regular exhibitions including all the major painters in Goa and established himself as curator and art critic for leading local news papers. Simultaneously he also painted and conducted art exploration programmes for children and adults.

Art became his redemption and healer. However, it was in 2002 after his trip to Barcelona (Spain), where he saw the original works of Miro, Picasso, Gaudi and Dali that he made up his mind to be a full time painter. Being relatively unencumbered by academic training he was able to move easily and almost directly into abstraction. His aesthetic thinking from the start was in terms of formalistic solutions which take precedence over representational considerations. Given the small size of the art community in Goa, Deviprasad started right out getting to know another generation of artists. His friendships with artists such as Antonio E Costa (Goa/Canada), Suhas Shilker (Goa) and Beatriz Maria Villarreal (Mexico), as well as generous patronage and encouragement from art-lover, Verner Velho (Goa), have helped him find his direction.

Deviprasad’s works, although unpremeditated, are process – based abstractions combined with quirky, child-like imagery and surrealistic poetry. It’s a very unusual combination. Despite the apparent lack of structure there is an inborn sense of symmetry and composition. The center play of empty spaces in his paintings is one of the most interesting parts of his work. They are infused with light and poetry.

In its playfulness and sexuality, Deviprasad’s work possesses influences of Catalan painter, sculptor and ceramist, Joan Miro. There is also an element of deconstruction reminiscent of the work of Philip Guston and Robert Ryman. Drawing is a critical part of his practice and in his work, drawing can also be a painting. His mentors would insist that he did hundreds of drawings and may be this is the reason his line is so free and assured, like a child drawing a pirate ship on a garden with a lawn and neat flower beds filled in with patches, scratches and blobs of blues pinks and greens.

Deviprasad says people often remark how his work lends itself to various possibilities like jewelry, fashion design, interior and installation. Having also worked on murals, Deviprasad would like to learn the process in detail.

Spiritual reading and meditation, particularly Osho, and teaching art therapy have been really positive, clarifying experiences for Deviprasad, he is finally at home with himself. His works, Deviprasad hopes, will engage everyone, including the very young and very old. It should not be difficult for his instinctive savant-like skill gives him an alchemist’s power. The willingness to move in new artistic directions wherever they may take him, is rooted in Deviprasad’s personal audacity, a trait that one might not at first meeting easily suspect in the man, ‘there must always be a journey with in’, he says.

- Swatee Nair

(Artist and Art Critic based in Goa, India)

May - 2007