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Non-representative art, particularly in India, is often understood as a means of repudiating worldly pleasure and pain. However, "Raza`s practice of symbolic abstraction has demonstrated that abstraction can also articulate an embracing of sringara, a joyous reaching-out experience. The abstractionist need not be a self-denying ascetic or a slave to the stimulations of the senses; rather, he can flourish through a dynamic interplay between these positions, savouring the world as a coded invitation that rewards the deciphering self with an expansion of consciousness" (Ranjit Hoskote, Painting as Japa: Recent Works by S H Raza, Art Musings exhibition catalogue, 2004, unpaginated).
In this piece Raza meditates on nature, its five basic elements, and the continuous life-cycle they work together to maintain. A five foot square fractured into twenty five panels, this canvas centers on Raza`s ubiquitous bindu. Also the center of the artist`s worldview, the bindu symbolizes the beginning and end of all sentience modulated by these elements. Prakriti, or the cosmic concept of nature that Raza`s art is committed to bringing to the viewer, comprises samira or ether, gagan or sky, pawak or fire, jala or water and kshiti or earth. Each of these rudimentary forces is represented by particular primary colors and geometric symbols, and in their interplay on this canvas, the artist seeks to commune with the universe.
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Non-representative art, particularly in India, is often understood as a means of repudiating worldly pleasure and pain. However, "Raza`s practice of symbolic abstraction has demonstrated that abstraction can also articulate an embracing of sringara, a joyous reaching-out experience. The abstractionist need not be a self-denying ascetic or a slave to the stimulations of the senses; rather, he can flourish through a dynamic interplay between these
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