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Upendranath T. R.

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Methods of Materials

“There is a method in his madness”- Polonius (Hamlet Act II, scene II)

The collages of Upendranath T.R exemplify a methodical madness. Perhaps, all those works that have been done in the genre of collage have a methodical madness in them. Whether they belong to the Cubist scheme of collages or the surrealist versions, the artists have taken a great care in expressing their madness in a...
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“There is a method in his madness”- Polonius (Hamlet Act II, scene II)

The collages of Upendranath T.R exemplify a methodical madness. Perhaps, all those works that have been done in the genre of collage have a methodical madness in them. Whether they belong to the Cubist scheme of collages or the surrealist versions, the artists have taken a great care in expressing their madness in a methodical way. The reason for the adherence to methods originates from the characteristics of the very medium. A collage is not possible if there is no methodical selective process. Translating creativity into the terms of madness could be an old way or an idealistic way of looking at it. However, the selection process of the constituent elements in making a collage demands a certain kind of scheme from the artist.

Upendranath’s method comes from his non-academic background. Having no training in art from any art college, the artist recognizes his engagement with collage as an engagement with the ‘fragments’. This could be, for him, the fragmented knowledge of the human beings in general or his own fragmented understanding of the world in particular. Whatever be the case, collages involve the notions of fragmentation and integration. In order to integrate an idea or an image within the field of production, the artist needs to go through a deliberate process of fragmenting; in the mundane terms, selecting, cutting and making further selections from the cut forms. In integration, the frantic nature of this selection, a splurging in/with the available, transforms into a much more resolved arena of articulation and mediation.

There are two worlds in Upendranath’s collages; one, a world that is closed therefore claustrophobic, the other one is with flexible boundaries. Both these worlds are inhabited by the silhouettes of certain characters created by the artist. They move from one world to the other, as if they were enacting a Grecian Classic. The enactment of certain gestures attributes these characters with identities. With the perspective projections of culture on to them, one could discern the figures as Adam, Eve- the enduring samples of origin and chaos- and the contemporary human being. They are denuded in their primal innocence and are provided only with sharp contours of existence.

The brownish and sepia toned paper pieces cut and pasted as the background, with the clear intention to emulate a painterly feel in more than one ways represent a closed world in Upendranath’s works. The human beings are caught in this dark deluge of happenings. Meanwhile, in the open world, the blue dominates. Blue that simulates the feeling of depths and heights become windows to an open world. There is a sense of sublime in them. The dark sublime of his claustrophobic world is equally ominous.

Considering the early works of Upendranath, one could not avoid reading a bit of politics into his works. This artist with a considerable amount of socio-cultural awareness produces a field of criticality, where he himself critiques what he deems to be politically incorrect and simultaneously participates in the same happenings as a person afflicted by dementia. However, it should not be taken as the gradual collapsing of the cognitive faculties of the artist as a critic, instead, it should be seen as a conscious effort to participate in order to elucidate the entrapment of the contemporary human being into the situations that he himself participates to produce.

When seen against this backdrop of criticality, Upendranath’s works are miniature supermarkets, where generation of desire and selection of the desired could happen simultaneously. A simple focal adjustment turns a supermarket display into an abstract form of colours and in the same way, the empowerment of human beings through the freedom of choice, by a simple focal adjustment could be viewed as systematic erosion of ‘self-will’ that leaves the ‘selectors’ totally disempowered. Upendranath deals with this ambiguous relationship between empowerment and disempowerment of human beings through socio-cultural modifications and the very technique of collage making both metaphorically and formally emulates this ambiguity.

Born
May 31, 1969 Kerala

Exhibitions

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2009 '90-09', Kashi Art Gallery,...

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Upendranath T. R.

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