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Lot 77

 

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Jayashree Chakravarty saturates her paintings with multiple layers of meaning, both physically, through her thick, layered application of paint, and emotionally, through the several levels of associations that each element on the surface holds for her. The artist, however, does not allow easy access to these layers. Her paintings are a mystery, silent witnesses to her cathartic practice. In the suite of works of which the present lot is a part,... Jayashree Chakravarty saturates her paintings with multiple layers of meaning, both physically, through her thick, layered application of paint, and emotionally, through the several levels of associations that each element on the surface holds for her. The artist, however, does not allow easy access to these layers. Her paintings are a mystery, silent witnesses to her cathartic practice. In the suite of works of which the present lot is a part, "…it is Chakravarty's use of colour, her obsessive engagement with acts of application, scraping, texturing, with acts of close pattern-making and saturation, that conveys the sense of urgency animating her exploration of sensorial and extra-sensorial experiences. Chakravarty layers disparate worlds together with great panache - the pigmental, the textural, the personal historical, and the imagistic registers are orchestrated together in a magical network that creates a telling language of associations" (Abhay Sardesai, "Mapping Consciousness, Translating Worlds", Where the Sand Meets the Sky, Bodhi Art exhibition catalogue, 2007, p. 6).

Each of Chakravarty's large, layered works on canvas, like the present lot, is a "…palimpsest, one improvisation partially obscuring another but leaving hints of each successive layer behind. The glittering surface is also reminiscent of a mosaic: as if in the flickering glow of candle light, explosions of light illuminate a tessellated surface. As in mosaic, the evocation of the ineffable is also embedded in Jayashree's densely- wrought, yet strangely fugitive painterly surface. The imagery floats, existing independent of the signs, textures and colours which accrete to them, like barnacles on the skin of a cetacean" (Michael Anderson, "The Shadow of Idea", In the Very Face of Time, Galerie 88 exhibition catalogue, 2006, not paginated).

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