Overview

Gayatri Gamuz was born in Spain in 1966.  In 1989, while still an art student, she travelled for the first time to India.

In 1992 she started to live and work in India. In the first years she travelled widely and stayed for periods in different places like Dharamshala, Varanasi, Vrindavan, Pushkar, Kerala and Coorg.

In Kerala, she was involved in the art and cultural movement from the 90’s, a period when the contemporary visual art flourished and Kochi started gaining a place in the art map of the world.  She played a key role and took part in the vibrant social and cultural discourse of Kerala: Mayalokam art collective, Kashi Art Cafe, the five annual Tree Festivals and in Encounter, 1st contemporary art festival in Kochi.

In 2008 Gayatri moved to Thiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu and started to live together with her family in their organic farm.  The new synergy she encountered in her reclusive life close to nature at the foot of the sacred mountain of Arunachala created a pronounced shift in her work. In 2017 her art transited from the figurative to the abstract space of silence.

Works

Notes

Artist Note

Through stillness I understand the oneness, and inside this process I paint. Stillness is where I find contemplation and creativity. Silence and stillness are not conceptual knowledge but our essential nature, we are inseparable from stillness – the “I am” that is deeper than name and form. The awareness of silence brings the inner still alertness.

Non-conceptual paintings exist in absence of cerebral questions and answers; there is nothing to solve. The most important aspect of the work is not the concept behind the work but the work itself.

Nature is deeply rooted in stillness and being.  While walking inside a forest we relate with its stillness, also if we contemplate a mountain, we understand her stillness, we don’t need a special required knowledge to understand it. Similarly, if we contemplate an art work and don’t search for the concept, then we are walking on a non-conceptual path. As we relate with the inner space of everything, we can relate also with the inner space inside an art work.

The essence of the Eastern world view is the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all things, the experience of all phenomena in the world as manifestations of a basic oneness. All things are seen as interdependent and inseparable parts of this cosmic whole, as different manifestations of the same ultimate reality. The ancient traditions constantly refer to this ultimate, indivisible reality which manifests itself in all things, and of which all things are part.   My work happens inside this understanding of oneness.

 As contemplation of nature can contain a spiritual dimension, also contemplation of art can be a process where we can experience the unknown, the mysteries of existence.  Paintings and other art forms are manifestos, symbols that can heal and transform the space energetically in a process which transcend the limits of the graspable reality and go beyond the material form.

Color and form are the essential content of my paintings. I paint predominantly water color on paper and oil on canvas. I work inside the perspective of abstraction and my inspiration stays in between east and west, on one side the oriental abstraction of the Zen calligraphy and on the other the western contemporary abstraction.

For many years I had been working inside the frame of figurative language when in October, 2016, I started a new collection of paintings. The day I gave the last touches to my first painting of the collection I got a dramatic revelation; my project was not going to happen. I sat in front of the finished painting and had an insight, I was entering a new search, the search of the formless, the connection with the “beyond the form” and I was moving away from the nameable.  The next day I took all my paintings off the walls. The studio was empty and I was ready for a new beginning. The outer form transcends to another dimension. The unnamed is painted, the silence emerges.

Venue

The Art Platform India & Threshold Art Gallery

www.theartplatformindia.com

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