Important Notice

Although much of Shibu Natesan’s work is executed in his flawless photorealist idiom, it exists in a parallel reality; his is a dream-like surreal world, where everything is not as it seems leaving his viewers feeling unsettled and challenging them to question their own realities. “It is his deliberate strategy to take verisimilitude beyond the bounds of reason or personal choice, into an area of unease. It is this unease rather than the subject... Although much of Shibu Natesan’s work is executed in his flawless photorealist idiom, it exists in a parallel reality; his is a dream-like surreal world, where everything is not as it seems leaving his viewers feeling unsettled and challenging them to question their own realities. “It is his deliberate strategy to take verisimilitude beyond the bounds of reason or personal choice, into an area of unease. It is this unease rather than the subject matter which forms the basis on which his pictures are made and forgotten with such seeming facility” (Geetha Mehra, Existence of Instinct, Sakshi Gallery exhibition catalogue, Mumbai, 2005, p. 3).

In the present lot, Natesan explores and subverts an East Asian dance performance from a unique perspective that encompasses the performer and her audience. Addressing the scene from the back of the stage, Natesan captures the performer gracefully bending over backwards; her gaze focused directly on the voyeuristic artist and, by extension, on the voyeuristic viewer as well. Beyond her, in the theatre, the audience is sparse; and while her features and bright red gown are rendered in meticulous detail, the audience members in their red seats dissolve in an undefined blur. Perhaps a comment on the fate of traditional arts in contemporary times or the exploitation of the performer, this large and arresting canvas, like most of the artist’s works, leaves the viewer with more questions than answers.

Natesan “…chooses to work as a realist using two strategies – directness and detachment. His details tie his subjects to a concrete reality but this perfection adds a certain detachment or emotional estrangement. Viewing Shibu Natesan’s paintings and reading Marquez create a similar presence of magic realism. Natesan’s ‘real-ness’ is literal but yet it does not seen familiar. His canvases are spaces inhabited by the presence of absence” (Bhavna Kakar, “Shibu Natesan in Conversation with Bhavna Kakar”, Art & Deal, Issue 18, New Delhi, 2005).

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