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Lot 86

 

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“Iranna’s chosen vehicle of articulation is the allegorical tableau: an idiom that offers its contents to the viewer with disarming candour, even as it withholds many of the subtexts that would render them readable – so investing its protagonists and situations with the quality of enigmatic presence” (Ranjit Hoskote, The Dancer on the Horse: Reflections on the Art of Iranna GR, Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, 2007, p. 14). Through these... “Iranna’s chosen vehicle of articulation is the allegorical tableau: an idiom that offers its contents to the viewer with disarming candour, even as it withholds many of the subtexts that would render them readable – so investing its protagonists and situations with the quality of enigmatic presence” (Ranjit Hoskote, The Dancer on the Horse: Reflections on the Art of Iranna GR, Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, 2007, p. 14). Through these protagonists and situations, G.R. Iranna explores the human and the social, the individual and the collective, exposing the nuances of their relationship and their various points of convergence of divergence.

In this grand diptych, Iranna juxtaposes the rough texture of the tarpaulin surface with the intricate decorative swirls of paint that he covers it with, making the work appear alternately bruised and opulent. Though the central kneeling figure and the seven standing figures in the background, with their arms raised as if in praise of the divine, the artist “…attends to the interiority of the spiritual quest…[exploring] dream, meditation, reality and epiphany as alternative states in a widely inclusive spectrum of consciousness; at the same time, crucially, he also focuses on the predicament of the political subject, voicing a range of concerns about the individual and the group, binding relationships and constricting structures…gathering a vocabulary of symbols and metaphors together and modulating them into contemporary fables” (Ibid).

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