Important Notice

Surendran Nair's ongoing suite of works, Cuckoonebulopolis, takes its name from the ideal world between heaven and earth that the Greek playwright Aristophanes first imagined in his satire, 'Birds'. Negotiating the tumultuous relationship between the ideal and the real, Nair creates a charged space on his canvases for his socio-political commentary. He explains, "Though the basic premise of imagining a utopia fascinates me, in the sense that it... Surendran Nair's ongoing suite of works, Cuckoonebulopolis, takes its name from the ideal world between heaven and earth that the Greek playwright Aristophanes first imagined in his satire, 'Birds'. Negotiating the tumultuous relationship between the ideal and the real, Nair creates a charged space on his canvases for his socio-political commentary. He explains, "Though the basic premise of imagining a utopia fascinates me, in the sense that it is a craving for a better world and thus a critique of the times…I use the idea of a utopia as a backdrop, a theatrical device to sharpen the contours of my images; the inner terrain they carry within and the outer, which they find themselves in, as well as to accentuate the tenor of whatever they address" (The Bad Behaviour of Singularities, Sakshi Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2006, not paginated).

In many paintings from this series, Nair approaches contemporary identity as a play enacted by individuals. Consequently, the actor and his stage are familiar subjects in his oeuvre. "The model of theatre, especially as distilled in the twinned glory and anxiety of being an actor, is central to Nair's art…His fascination with the ceremonial of theatre is manifest: we see it in his evocation of the ritual of making up and presenting oneself in a persona, literally the mask of another personality; in the gestures of self-transformation that his characters perform, allowing for passage from one shape or identity to another; and in the ensemble action of animated visual image and stimulating text that characterises his paintings" (Ranjit Hoskote, "The Openness of Secrecy: Soliloquy and Conversation in the Art of Surendran Nair", Itinerant Mythologies: Surendran Nair, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 2008, p. 8).

In the present lot, the artist presents the made-up face of an actor playing the part of a demonic dvarpalika or gate-keeper in uncomfortable close-up. Here, however, the actor's wide open mouth is the mysterious portal that he guards, his tongue leading the way through his fangs into its dark, alternate reality. Titled Elysium, after the idyllic plains of the Greek underworld where heroes' souls were said to finally find peace, in this painting Nair is perhaps commenting on our constant quest to arrive at utopian worlds beyond the one we inhabit, and the treacherous obstacles that we negotiate through our lives in pursuit of this quest.

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