Viewing Room Ghanshyam Gupta

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COLOUR SCULPTING

Ghanshyam Gupta

RETROSPECTIVE IN COLOUR CHAOS
26th November till 15th December 2020

Ghanshyam Gupta’s works are a play on optical illusion meant to create such puzzling perceptions of his work that keeps us viewers engaged. His works conveying this feeling of tranquility, peace and calm, have a meditative quality to them. His works are colourful, utilizing vivid, pop colours like purples and pinks, that render them quite inviting by adding a kind of playfulness to his works.

Purposeful use of concentric circles of bright and varying colours further adds such a hypnotic value to his works, that makes us viewers seek some deeper meaning into those paintings. So, as one continues to look one notices patterns emerge in his paintings.

Like many of the optical illusion artists of the world — Bridget Riley, Victor Vasarely, etc — Ghanshyam Gupta uses repetition of lines, curves and colours to produce such illusions in his art. Optical illusion art is an art field that has gained a lot of popularity in recent years, with museums and art galleries using it as a way to give an immersive experience to the audience with the op-art installations and/or paintings. Optical illusion engages people and intrigues viewers as it often forces a second look, exploiting the limitations of the way human eye processes colours, light, movement, depth and graphics. Op art is a visual language that many artist’s use to portray an abstract interpretation of their thoughts, feelings and surroundings.

His latest works are in trend especially with current times, where more often than not works are being presented online. Usage of optical illusion in his works enraptures a viewer online, as one needs to look at it time and again, pulling us in repeatedly as viewers.

Similar to Frank Stella’s when it comes to the use of geometric symmetry, patterns and repetition, Ghanshyam’s work is still vastly different as he uses his artworks to make people feel at home with them, open to varied interpretations. While Stella’s work, with the use of bright colours and raw and unfinished look, never meant his works to have any symbolic meaning to be interpreted.

Like many of his contemporaries, he is interested in the perception created by the visual and psychological resonance of colour, lines and forms. His works are subtle with the illusions, it exists, but only on a closer look. Through precise combinations of lines, colours, and curves he creates paintings, with depth, movement, and a serene calm feeling to it.

Bridget Riley and Ghanshyam Gupta both have a similar goal in mind with their op arts — the visual and emotional response to colour. Like Bridget who utilizes curves in her art, Ghanshyam too uses curvilinear motion in his art and they both through their work invoke the feeling of tranquility and peace. Although in contrast to Bridget Riley’s works mostly in black and white, Ghanshyam’s are rarely so.

Ghanshyam’s works are mesmerizing. These latest works using threadbare thin lines have concentric circles, intermingling with a plethora of squares and circles. So the more one looks at his works the more one is likely to question one’s own perceptions as possibly the trickery of the eye. While looking at Ghanshyam’s paintings we experience a sense of movement — the perception of these circles being in constant motion — as he employs colours, lines and the limitations of the human eye to his advantage.

Meditation 2
Acrylic color on canvas – 22 x 42 inches

Blue Meditation
Acrylic color on canvas – 8 x 8 inches

Circle Motion
Acrylic color on canvas – 48 x 48 inches

Horizon
Acrylic color on canvas – 12 x 12 inches

Illusion
Acrylic color on canvas – 36 x 36 inches

Two Aspect
Acrylic color on canvas – 8 x 8 inches

Equal Division
Acrylic color on canvas – 8 x 8 inches

Horizon Circle
Acrylic color on canvas – 8 x 8 inches

Design Surface
Acrylic color on canvas – 12 x 12 inches

Filtering The Vision
Acrylic color on canvas – 38 x 38 inches

Peace Process
Acrylic color on canvas – 24 x 65 inches

In some of his works, their layered and in-depth intermix of varied colours and several circles, create a feeling akin to the works of the artists’ like Jin Sook Shinde and Carlos Cruz Diez, a sense of motion. Using lines and colours similar to Cruz Diez and like him, he hopes people have an experience with colour that entails a participatory and interactive experience in space and time. His use of fine lines and combinations of colours help him achieve that.

On the other hand artists’ like Richard Anuszkiewicz’s and Victor Vasarely’s works, create mind-bending paintings that are more jarring in your face experience, are saturated with vibrant colours that seem to pop out, pulsate off and change forms on the canvas. In contrast, Ghanshyam’s work though colourful and vibrant have a more calm and quiet feel to it, it is more subtle with the illusions.

His works are colourful, having used a varied number of colours, some of them not necessarily my first choice but they still work together. In addition, while the central part of his latest works seems to be lines drawn in forms of circles and squares, there are still multitudinous ways in which he has used these graphics. Going through his work also allowed me as a viewer to interpret my own meanings of some of his work and come to my own conclusions.

Ghanshyam’s latest works are vibrant and intriguing. Seemingly they convey a feeling that there is serenity and order that comes after chaos. Herein he showcases some of his latest works that are based on his experiences.

Pigmentation and colour scale is as Indian as Abdoulaye Konate defines the Malian Sahel of Africa. Cruz Diez and Jesus Rafael Soto formed the school of Venezuelan Optical and Kinetic art similarly Ghanshyam Gupta comes from a time and places contextual to Indian art history were as one of the early Inlaks Foundation scholars to the Royal College of Arts, London, he was the early consequences of a new aesthetic aligned to globalisation or an internationalism based on global capital, trade and liberalisation. Gupta growing up in Aurangabad and originating from Uttar Pradesh represented an aspiration that was keen to shed the yoke of poverty and provincialism. He was ambitious: a print award in London gave him capital to buy land above the Ellora Hill to establish a Sculpture Park in 1997 but was scuttled by the unending chicanery of Indian bureaucracy creaking under norms of license raj. A residency at the Cites des Arts in Paris saw him walk the city imaging how he would visualise form and colour in his aesthetics. Since then he finds residencies across the world to find time for his practice which he began at MSU Baroda. Undeterred by his initial failed utopia he worked to
be part of the first video art exhibition organised by Chemould Art Gallery and Indian Art Magazine along with Ranbir Kaleka and Akbar Padamsee. Since then he has been entrepreneurial using commissioned sculpture to finance his paintings. His paintings manifesting in as optical illusions in the eyes of the viewer, sculptural, possible and art.

A painter, sculptor and printmaker, Ghanshyam Gupta is an abstract artist whose works is in the genre of optical illusion. Often influenced by his earlier experiences he uses colours that are visually stimulating and abstract. In that sense, his works are a kind of colour therapy.

He has exhibited at the London Original Print Fair at the Royal Academy of Art, London, in 1997 along with some of the greatest artists of all times: Lucian Freud, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Edward Munch, Henri Matisse, Rembrandt, and Albert Durer. He was also part of the of video-based installations curated by The Art News Magazine and Chemould Gallery at Max Muller Bhavan Kala Ghoda featuring works by Akbar Padamsee, Ranbir Kaleka among other artists. He has received the Nordsten Award for the Best Print of the year from the London Original Print Association and the Art Museum Award Winner from Tokyo International mini-print Triennial, Japan in 1998.

Ghanshyam Gupta graduated with a masters in printmaking from the Royal College of Art, London in 1997 where he was an Inlaks Scholar and has a bachelors in Fine Arts from MS University Baroda.

Ananta Singh – Curator (born in 1997, Patna, presently living in Bombay) has graduated with a degree in Political science and Economics. She got interested in photography and videography about three years back, and simultaneously got interested in other forms of art as well. Particularly fascinated by patterns thrown by the interplay of lights and shadows, she continues to experiment with it. Looking for such parallels due to interplay of colours in other art forms she has learnt to realize the importance of choosing art works that compliment each other. Her active association with Art & Soul Gallery has helped her showcase and hone her skills.