Like the proscenium stage, the canvas offers an empty space for enacting the eternal cycle of life and eath. The dramatic tension created by loss and longing finds expression in many a visual image. In this series of paintings, Chandana Hore gives a glimpse of the pain of being that writhes in her soul. From a very young age, she felt in the depths of her being, the inevitable negation of life. Daughter of artists Somnath and Reba Hore, Chandana has dedicated this exhibition to the memory of her father, the renowned sculptor and printmaker, Somnath Hore, who died recently. Chandana trained as an artist at Kala Bhavana doing her graduation and post-graduation from there. Subsequent to her academic training, Chandana worked independently at Kanoria Art Centre in Ahmedabad. It took her a while to evolve her distinctive idiom of expression, but now through her deft handling of brush and paint, she has been successful in giving an identity to her canvases.
Chandana choreographs on her canvases the reclining figure watched over by a single or couple of pensive heads. The reclining figure is central to the painting and can be a male or a female form. In the current series of paintings, it is evident that the memory of her father's recent demise and his protracted illness has spilled over into her images. In one painting, the contraptions that accompany a sick bed, like the bedpan are clearly visible. The predominant colour in this painting is the kind of green that one associates with hospitals. In contrast, there is the painting of the reclining young female form, combining in her self both innocence and an instinctive knowledge of the hungers of the flesh. She is watched over by two sympathetic heads, possibly parental. It is an expression of the girl child's painful awareness of the body.
The reclining figure and the watching heads are quite often metaphors of weakness, vulnerability, erosion of identity and existence. The melancholy forms float in space conjured up by memory's inner eye. Alternatively, the triad of figures can be seen locked in a poignant relationship of dominance and surrender. In the shifting power balance within intimate relations, empathy and conflict can be intimately entwined. The heads can be mournful of impartial observers. Possibly, they can also be censorious.
In Chandana's images, the pain and despair implicit in the mortality of all relationships is counterbalanced by the organic vibrancy of nature. The moist softness and gentle unfolding of round floral and vegetal forms offer a healing balm which regenerates. And as with all ambivalences in Chandana's images, many of the gestures and organic forms speak of a hidden stream of pulsating sexuality.
The human figures are not corporeal or massive. They seem to surface from the deep recesses of memory and experience and they inhabit a dream space or imagine territory. This helps to create a distance between the characters portrayed in the theatre of anguish and the artist, who knows the searing pain of loss but has cast herself in the role of an observer and an interpreter. The distancing and detachment mute the incredible sorrow of being.
While the figures seem to float in space, it is in her application of paint that Chandana suggests an undeniable sense of physicality. Applying layer upon layer of thick, viscous paint, she creates a tactile surface on the canvas where the broad, rhythmic or feverish brushstrokes exude a seductive appeal and a promise of joyous release. Brushes loaded with paint leave their dense trail on the canvas surface creating an inviting texture. Rhythm and movement are sensed by the way the brush moves. The thick, textured surface is at once a shield to cover raw emotions and at the same time reflect a melancholy air.
Finally, it is Chandana's colours that define expressiveness. She keeps a diary where she records her sensations of pain, suffering and ecstasy through colours. Her world and environment are described in terms of colours. She speaks of “gold and violet evenings,” and “crystal blue nights, cobalt blue.” She describes her room:“ blue lights, yellow lights; blue bedcover, red roses, window, blue sofa cover, white curtains. Paintings.”
While details are barely suggested in Chandana's images, broad slatherings and splotches of colours dominate her paintings. The artist experiences a joyous liberation in the act of lavishing paint on the canvas. Large fields of bright yellows, ochres, oranges, reds, different blues and greens explode on her canvases. Sometimes they are celebratory and at other times their velvety tenderness are subdued with a melancholy cast. Sometimes the paint is scrabbled on the canvas and at other times it glints with the dewy freshness of gentle rain. The juxtaposition of contrasting and complementing colours creates a compelling visual pattern.
