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Lot 54

 

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Shibu Natesan’s works, based on images from various media sources or photographs that the artist has taken, bear a startling resemblance to the real. In the artist’s paintings, however, these images prompt a series of readings that contravene the intent of the source or original. “Natesan puts his source materials through several ‘filters’ in the process of painting, arriving at finished works that often have little relationship to the intent of... Shibu Natesan’s works, based on images from various media sources or photographs that the artist has taken, bear a startling resemblance to the real. In the artist’s paintings, however, these images prompt a series of readings that contravene the intent of the source or original. “Natesan puts his source materials through several ‘filters’ in the process of painting, arriving at finished works that often have little relationship to the intent of the originals. The quick, for Natesan, seems to be in creating an image that is intensely familiar, that one has glimpsed on the television screen or on the street, while also being intensely foreign, unexpected, mysterious” (Chaitanya Sambrani, Under the Skin of Simulation, The Fine Art Resource exhibition catalogue, Berlin, 2003, unpaginated). This interaction between the recognizable and the strange in Natesan’s hyperrealist work expresses the artist’s personal experiences of migration, alienation and the intermingling of cultures that has resulted from the process of globalization.

In the present lot, Natesan has painted the familiar image of Mahatma Gandhi, clad in simple white khadi with a clean shaven head. However, instead of spinning yarn or reading, as he is typically and reverently portrayed, the artist disregards the viewer’s expectations and renders Gandhi peering intently through a mono-ocular microscope. The image is drawn from a famous 1940 photograph of Gandhi studying a slide of leprosy bacteria at his Sevagram Ashram in Wardha. Referred to affectionately as Bapu, or father, Gandhi is usually remembered for the non-violent, simple and frugal way of life that he advocated. In this work, however, Natesan draws the viewer’s attention to the frequently overlooked scientific bent of the leader, and his interest in humanizing its practice across the world with the principles of satya, dharma and prem, or truth, duty and love.

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