Venkatesh Pate - No Parking

NO PARKING, 2012

Tao Art Gallery, Mumbai

Jehangir Art Gallery,Mumbai

Within the ambiance of human existence lie a dichotomy; a kind of controversy- one that opposes, each other, and primarily attached to the body and the soul. These jointly perforate within a system that is both externally internalised, and internally externalised. These perceptions can be expressed by an artist as a visionary, through figuration and a kind of body language. Both these complexities of negatives and positives, embedded within a framework of society, and our emotional self. The ultimate recourse is to be found in abstraction, which extends, from such form contents, to seek solace under a conscious reality that is visible to the clairvoyant, but blind to the blind. Such a tendency can be amazingly noticed, in Venkatesh Pate's recent oeuvre.

Today with the dizzying pace of technological and scientific advancements; we are in a century placed in an urban, and suburban, environmental setting that is confused and muddled.

From a mere exploration of the human physical contour entailing sensibility as in yoga, Venkatesh has extended, transformed, and transgressed through his art, to a real realm of beauty and pathos. Astoundingly simple and minimal in rendering, not excluding even the animate and inanimate life-generating forms, placed in an isolated setting; make Interestingly certain works relate to semiotics, that informs us of the presence of the omnipotent. It is interesting to find how the negative and positive ultimately demand a harmonisation of the senses.

How does one find a solution to that? Today we find our dwelling spaces encroached by concrete jungles, of towering heights. Well, in the process of development we have ignored the very nature of our existence that should have been as, “God Created”.

No more do we feel the warmth, of the early morning light, which trespassed by projected spaces, cut away the vital light to our lives. The birds too have no more trees to perch and to sing the morning psalm. The trees are no more there to park.

Despite complex in treatment, judicious employment of space division and composition; the minimal carry this message effectively, and Venkatesh pate, sure succeeds in doing this with feeling and sensitivity, engaging dark images in contrast, embedded in vast fields of plain whites, capable enough to retain a message of value, in memory.

- V. Hariraam

Abstract Painter