Part of an exhibit titled, Existence of Instinct, this work is characteristic of Shibu Natesan’s concerns with vulnerability, the imposition of power, and the unsettling moment of quietude between the predator and the victim before they engage. Natesan’s paintings “shock contrasts and encounters create strong metaphors, very much in the same vein as the German painter, Friedrich Casper David before him, to whom Natesan looks...
Part of an exhibit titled, Existence of Instinct, this work is characteristic of Shibu Natesan’s concerns with vulnerability, the imposition of power, and the unsettling moment of quietude between the predator and the victim before they engage. Natesan’s paintings “shock contrasts and encounters create strong metaphors, very much in the same vein as the German painter, Friedrich Casper David before him, to whom Natesan looks up to. Through the symbolism, the viewer is encouraged to shift and refocus their gaze, and in many instances, to re-address their own socio-political beliefs. Topics of focus range from power structures and moral breakdown to racism and the predicament of the migrant.”(Anne Fleetwood, Vision Unlimited, Grosvenor Gallery, 2005)
Natesan “brings in taut metaphors of physical domination and power structures in a world of moral contestation. Natesan tends to hone in a large number of his paintings on the palpably vulnerable in any social situation - street urchins, children, public performers, in short supplicants of a universal goodwill. It brings in the presence of the predator and the hunted, and the ever present, if passive, spectator. Thus - as the cheetah chases the deer - all violent action becomes spectatorial, and all assumptions of power are asserted as moral positions. The interest in this exhibition lies in Natesan’s obvious painterly skills and his ability to cross reference other histories, other narratives in art, and to bring them within a frame that must remain finally, open-ended. (Gayatri Sinha, The Hindu, February, 4, 2005)