Important Notice

"I want to go to spaces that are unseen, unknown, the so-called unconscious. But, the conscious and the unconscious exist side by side for me. When something happens or unfurls on the surface, it may seem accidental, but in reality, it has been cooking just beneath for a long time. As in Nature, nothing is an accident for me." - RAMESHWAR BROOTA

Rameshwar Broota's art is based on his view that the industrialised world is... "I want to go to spaces that are unseen, unknown, the so-called unconscious. But, the conscious and the unconscious exist side by side for me. When something happens or unfurls on the surface, it may seem accidental, but in reality, it has been cooking just beneath for a long time. As in Nature, nothing is an accident for me." - RAMESHWAR BROOTA

Rameshwar Broota's art is based on his view that the industrialised world is losing its humanity with advances in technology and an increasing reliance on machines. The present lot, titled Blast in Silence, juxtaposes an intimate and sensitive human organ with a small but cold, metallic tweezer. Art historian Ella Datta states, "The painting of an enlarged, exquisitely shaped ear counterposed with an unrelenting concrete form crystallises a subtle dialogue between man-made form and a natural one. The way he evokes the intrinsic characters of the two different forms is a wonderful experience. On the one hand, there is the complex auricular form with its supple skin and delicate, curvilinear bone structure and on the other, there is the severe, rigid, phallic, form symbolising an incipient aggression." (Ella Datta, Rameshwar Broota, New Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery, 2005, p. 9)

Broota's work creates a discourse on the paradox of man, who is powerful yet exceedingly vulnerable, and increasingly "... threatened by his own creations... His staying in power and resilience is pitched against the omnipotence of his metallic counterparts." (Roobina Karode, Counterparts: Recent Paintings by Rameshwar Broota, New Delhi, Vadehra Art Gallery, 2009, p. 5) Broota works with a technique of layering and scratching away paint which creates a finely textured and richly tonal surface. "By 1978 the sharp geometrically defined spaces and massive figures evaporated under the insistent scraping and nicking of the blade. On the brink of a definite phase in his career, Broota realised the figure need not be imposed on the canvas. It could as well be coaxed, revealed or evacuated from its depths." (Karode, p. 29) The imagery of the present lot is underscored by this technique of scratching and nicking away with a blade.

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