Important Notice

“In Gopikrishna’s paintings we are invited into a world view which encompasses not only flourishes of fabulous technical skill but, more importantly, establishes its own unique construction of time and space. It is a world where personalities float, fight and sleep according to universal laws entirely of the artist’s own making: but these are laws so tantalizingly close to our own world that we constantly hover between a knowing and unknowing of... “In Gopikrishna’s paintings we are invited into a world view which encompasses not only flourishes of fabulous technical skill but, more importantly, establishes its own unique construction of time and space. It is a world where personalities float, fight and sleep according to universal laws entirely of the artist’s own making: but these are laws so tantalizingly close to our own world that we constantly hover between a knowing and unknowing of the motivations that activate his subjects…Gopikrishna’s ability to create…alternate truths out of the earthbound laws of physics, animal behaviour and man-made moral values is coupled with an extraordinary skill of making us believe the impossible” (Mortimer Chatterjee, Dream Conservatory, Art Musings exhibition catalogue, 2007, unpaginated).

In this large canvas, Gopikrishna provides his amalgamated, wonderland version of two traditional South Indian dances: the Kavadi Attam and the Puli Attam. The first originated in a Tamil pilgrimage practice of carrying offerings to Lord Murugan strung between two sticks that were supported on their shoulders. The dance, performed only by men, includes balancing a curved bamboo strung with pots on the two kavadi sticks. The second, literally translating as Tiger Dance, is also performed by men. Dressed and made-up as tigers, they pounce to the fast beat of drums during religious festivals at temples. Here, the artist replaces the pots of milk or coconut water that typically hang between the kavadi sticks with live animals, perhaps tigers, strung mercilessly from hooks on the curved bamboo. Thus, a new practice, the Puli Kavadi, is born.

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