Film, Art & Design – Bharat Sarwaiya
DIVISION is the latest collection of works based on subtle/ submissive/ disassociative/objective reality & perception. The process registers fine, disconnected object/ spatial patterns in peculiar reductive yet amplified sense of time, space and association. Thus these works results in a purity of form that is complemented by the subtle classicist experiments.
In form, the works are very different from earlier draft “INERTIA”. Earlier suppression of color and formal objective space is replaced by fragmented pieces, primary colors & multiple cross interacting spatial arrangements: The simple arrangements of objects and space in familiar yet so disjointed mechanisms of relationships.
This interest in classical perspective is to enhance the cross-relationships of the common and the ordinary. Division is about the understated arrangements and associations in some familiar perspectives.
The reductive aesthetic and informal clarity of disassociative minimalism is essential to the work of Bharat Sarwiya; the omission of extraneous details from his artwork results in a purity of form that is complemented by his subtle experiments in perception. Purity of form is something that each successive generation must rediscover for itself. Bharat’s work is a confirmation of objective disassociative minimalism continued. His monochromatic paintings allow him to explore issues implicit to a stripped-down aesthetic and examine the context in which art is experienced.
Bharat’s new work is a departure from his monochromatic paintings. Yet these works bears similarities to his old figurative heavy works but still holding a progressive tint of the post-modernist traits. To accomplish this, he limits the parameters of his technical process to the essential elements of painting, but in doing so he goes beyond painting to invest it with a situational, relational and conceptual content. The elements foregrounding his works are common objects, surroundings, shape, colour and, importantly, the raw pencil itself. They are usually drawn out of the specific context of spatial position and the materiality of the work. Some works confront the picture plane with shapes that hint at pictorial perspective. The sum of these elements remind us that it is associations and perceptive commonalities that we look at first and last in his painting, while the precision of his concept directs us to a complex variety of perceptual experiences.
The simple arrangements of objects and space in familiar yet so disjointed mechanisms of relationships: Thus the title ‘DIVISION’ is a representation of what it is, where it came from, draws attention to the conceptual basis of his work. With a spare number of media — pencil, ink and acrylics — Bharat makes an interactive space arranged with precise dotted lines, dividers, brackets, safety lines that is devoid of metaphor or hidden meanings; the raw pencil or bright ink fills are what they are and nothing more. Yet the simplicity of their arrangement reveals a strategy that opens up a deliberate economy of formal means to explore specific concerns such as process, the perceptive nature of art, the structural properties of material objects, and the fact that the conceptualization and formation of ideas are as important as the objects themselves.
When asked of his influences, Bharat referred to whole lot of artists whose work keeps building his conceptual/ visual language. Rene Magritte, Robert Rauschenberg, Francis Bacon, Giorgio de Chirico, Philip Guston to name a few. These artists’ work has been about movement into deep perspective. His long fascination with landscape artists like Claude Lorrain, Jacob van Ruisdael and others filled his imagery with strict formalist perspectives and rigor. Contemporary graphic design has been his other acute influence in shaping his new works.
Just as the structure of the pictorial space is integral to Bharat’s paintings, so too is the coinciding prose which camouflages certain aspects of the work not seen visually. The intricacies of prose adds to the semiotic undertones of his visual space .This interest in classical perspective is to enhance the cross-relationships of the common and the ordinary. Division is about the understated arrangements and associations in some familiar perspectives.