Important Notice

“Shibu Natesan plucks his figures from the daily flow of images…And while Shibu may well consult the 24-hour random-access-memory archive of the media for his images, his is not a random method. Rather, he fixes upon images of isolated effort, or of political disturbance; of the individual as unnoticed hero, or of the group of figures as a frieze in crisis. Elegant as Shibu’s hyperrealism is, it is edged with brusqueness. Seemingly easy to... “Shibu Natesan plucks his figures from the daily flow of images…And while Shibu may well consult the 24-hour random-access-memory archive of the media for his images, his is not a random method. Rather, he fixes upon images of isolated effort, or of political disturbance; of the individual as unnoticed hero, or of the group of figures as a frieze in crisis. Elegant as Shibu’s hyperrealism is, it is edged with brusqueness. Seemingly easy to access, his paintings are complex visual surfaces: they invite viewers in, only to rebuff them” (Ranjit Hoskote, Alchemy, Art Musing exhibition catalogue, 2005, not paginated).

In the present lot, Natesan paints a larger-than-life portrait of a young Asian girl, perhaps a dancer, hurrying across the frame. She is dressed in ballet flats and an elegant satiny gown, whose pinkish shades correlate with the reds of the ground and the draped objects behind her. Titled ‘Redder than Red’, this epic canvas is painted with the flattened perspective and in the jewel tones and that characterize Natesan’s work from the period following his residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, in 1996-97.

Speaking about his style, Hoskote notes, “Shibu’s treatment is only deceptively related to photorealism; in fact, it is not an extension of photography, but a crisp departure from it. He distorts the detail, flattens the depth of field, and employs the harshness of light and extent of shadow to pare down a figure or extend an object into indefinable nuance. This is why, although Shibu’s paintings originate in magazine photographs, they gain a riddle-like, inexplicable quietness more often associated with the paintings of such masters of the enigmatic situation as Piero della Francesca, Vermeer and Seurat” (Ibid.).

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