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Metamorphosis and Transcendency
When talking to Hem Raj you feel like speaking to an artist with a conception of art dating back to a time ling before secularization of art took pace. He emphasizes the “Dignity” in art, specially of painting, if it’s “aspiring vocation”. Remarkable for the oeuvre of the 1969 born Indian painter. His paintings gained early national and international recognition and appreciation; they deal in a liberal, almost cheerful way with transcendental bearings, along with an intensive abstraction, an almost purificatory style rarely found in today’s art world. A hint may be seen in the titles of his recent production: “Metamorphosis”, “Voice for voiceless” and “thou”.
In all his work, starting with the early Tantric inspired paintings and leading to the recent large coloured squares, named by the ecclesiastical English title “Thou”, a respectful devotional invocation, he in-cludes naïve drawings of animals, stylized sexual objects, pictograms of plants and animals. Some-times they are scratched into a thick layer of paint, sometimes washed on top with a seemingly fast brush. Yet the picture planes are always distinctly organized and screened. Squares, spaces shoved against each other, graphic elements organize the canvas and put it to distinct order. Tantra, the ecstatic way in Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, is all but far from Hem Raj’s meditative paintings. “Pictures”, he say, “ought to bring peace to the spectator as well as the painter”. He uses the ancient Indian team “Anand”, “bliss” in English, which can be translated with utmost happiness.
Animals to Hem Raj are means to express wildness. To him men alike is driven by carnal desires even when trying to ignore them. Lingam and Yoni (male and female genitals), sperm, symbols of fertility like serpents and blossoms testify to this way of thinking. He is convinced that the artist is a medium, obliged to express truth and manifestations beyond common reality. His way to express this is paint and canvas. And then again paint and canvas are medium to him. Just think of Gertrud Stein’s famous line: “A rose is a rose is a rose…”.
On first sight this concept of art is utterly astonishing. Should we step back to pre-renaissance art in order to discover such a philosophy? The artist a “Creator alter”? Not at all when you think of the theories e.g. of surrealism, initial essays of Kandinsky and early reflections on abstract art; all of this is very close to the thinking of Hem Raj.
During the recent years Hem Raj has somewhat moved away from the stern, highly defined construction of his paintings. The are very colourful and gained more freedom in configuration. Very large, often radiating monochrome spaces are arranged in daring combination. Numerous erotic sings and highly stylized presentations of animals are dancing along the rims as graphic design. They don’t push into the intensive coloured expanses which dominate the larger parts of the painting. The paintings thus become icons for meditation and transcendency.
©Ernst W. Koelnsperger, Munich, May 2004
©Translation: Arne e. Fuchs
Envisioning the invisible
Sometimes the kingdom of art would seem to have shrunk like the Vatican state, thanks to the culture of quantity of finer methods of mapping or dealing with the world of forms and substances. Serious art and actuality appearing to have almost parted company as far as the outer would were concerned. Artist will now set out to dredge independent existences, conceived in the inner recesses of their being and pray why? For despite the rigorous new world of weights and measures and the concomitant computation, the man within the man – the experience – remains as tantalizing a mystery as every, and as such sought after.
Still, only a few artists really dive deep within to bring us some tokens of vibrations from the mainly unsounded depths – trying to incarnate them in lines of light. In this order of work an artist may have little use for what the outer says has to give. No birds or beasts, nothing but incandescent vibrations as if an anima were trembling, like a filament within the bulb of consciousness. How else is one to interpret the emotive meaning of these forays? Over here we start from the centre, at the very heart of the circle, from whence the whole play drives its source and the reasons for being. Yes, the claimed anima possesses a light all its own, the light that the inner vision knows, and expresses, in the cosmos of inebriate colours. This particular light is not a reflection of light from outside. It comes of the heart of the attuned hearts.
Hem Raj’s prime artistic phase is, verily, an objectification of some such inner phenomenon. It is not a work of the mind alone; it is non-referential and at a double remove. The artist merely hints, carrying out, as he is the promptings of his secret spirit. As if surrendered to beauty, and in deep absorption, he seems to have severed from the fixed, and fought over doctrines of the art world. Yes his latest in line mysterious seeming gestalts and forms could not have matured but for some felt inner resonance. Imaging the formless, they surpass the artist’s private fortunes. Works of this order are works of imaginative vision, not of the other passions.
The painter in line with the artistically clairvoyant godfathers of the human race re-enacts a deeper painterly concentration. He pays homage to the principle informing a by now buried inheritance. He is one among chosen of its honest votaries, with little use for fashions in current art forms. It is prayer that he stays this way till the last.
KESHAV MALIK
New Delhi
May 2004
This Painter Captures Spirit of Nature In Oils
If he had not been a painter, 33 year-old Hem Raj would have probably found his calling in being an environmentalist. The Delhi College of Art product swears by his “pakki dosti” with oils. “That is why flora and fauna find an important place in my work. Even the stone lying on the road is connected to us in some way.” No wonder, he calls his current exhibition, on view at the Delhi Art Gallery till December 7, ‘An Ozone for Spirit.’But then, all his shows in the past too (his first art outing, Metamorphosis was held at Lalit Kala Akademi in ’91) have had exotic titles. “I take the help of my teachers and seniors for such things,” says Hem Raj, who won the National Award in 2000. But if there is one person he credits for motivating him, it is his father. “He understood my innate talent for art and persuaded me to take the exams for the art college.”
Though Hem Raj remembers his first year in college as “very unsatisfactory”, he went on to win the award for best student for both BFA and MFA courses. Do awards mean a lot to his? “such recognition does make one confident but I do not strive to get them,” says Hem Raj, who has earlier shown at the Dhoomimal Art Gallery and Alliance Francaise. He counts V Gaitonde and K. S. Kulkarni among those those who have inspired him. “I am fascinated by the freedom in their work. Only now this control over medium has begun to creep into my work.”
POONAM GOEL
HT CITY
Saturday, 1 December 2001
Voice For Voiceless
Art, perhaps, is the only tool of compassion and concern, as also the device used by any sensitive/ creative person for giving form and mysterious elaboration of the space of his existence.
Everyday the problems, and apprehensions of problems change.
Our eco-system is the sancrosant space in which we must make peace and maintain natural balance.
It is heartening to note that a painter like Hem Raj is sensitized with these concerns. Sometime ago he had come across a report published somewhere which mentioned in categorical terms the biological nature of evolution and the econ-system.
In an conference the President of the British Biological Association most probably Mr. Badkun made an important statement. The statement could be interpreted as follows.
“Evolution of Life of Man is hardly the addition of any new traits. North has been added. On the contrary, gradually some handicaps and limiting traits were dropped. Whatever is within the animal called ‘man’ becomes manifest during the process of evolution, barring the dropped handicaps in the river of time.
“On comparative thinking animals have something more than man. The limitations of animals got gradually dropped till we came to man. What was hidden in animal is manifest in man.”
Perhaps the cunning and selfishness faculties of man have come to surface. Resultant, of course, is the deteriorating econ-system involving the vanishing species of flora and fauna, conceit in capital letters. Should man continue to think himself as the monarch of all nature, all that he sees, and all that he does not see.
By systematically curbing the ‘Voices for Voiceless’, and in many ways silencing them, man is far from being responsible. The so-called civilized activity has perched him on the branch of Kalidas, he himself is felling with his axe.
For the modern de-sensitized man, Hem Raj is forwarding an ‘animal Argument of his aesthetics’ silently and deserves appreciation.
Textures of compassion are the abode of simple, poetic and linear statements. Tigers and cows and buffaloes, birds and tree are silently singing the tune of surrender to the ‘Almightly’, senseless, cruel and greedy one, totally and categorically. God save these Jatakas, the jatakas which form the manifest, the Biosphere. All of us live in this Biosphere.
Do we hear the Voice for Voiceless?
UMESH VARMA
(Painter/Artcritic)
23.01.2001
New Delhi
Artist: Hem Raj Exhibition at Alliance Francaise
A product of the Delhi of Art, Hem Raj has come a long way since he first started out. His present exhibition consists of multimedia works using mostly pastels and charcoal.
The symbolism relies equally on colours, bold strokes and geometric figures. They blend together perfectly to form a structured whole. Most of Hem Raj’s works are inspired by cave paintings and folk motifs. He seeks to find a language for the changing faces of nature through colour and line. Hem Raj is guided by hypothetical ideas which are governed by their own logic and formulate their own meaning. He intuitively weaves one concept into another turning them into one unified whole. All the various aspects when pictorially correlated create an interesting ambience and mood.
FIRST CITY
October 1996
Celebrating the divine, proclaiming rebellion
The first thing you notice about Hem Raj’s paintings titled “Metamorphosing. To Devotion’ is their sheersize. Added to the mammoth look, the paintings are mounted on some exquisite hand-crafted (by the artist himself) wooden frames interspersed with rusty iron and brass patches and chains as are found on some ancient doors. “The frame is the gateway to the sanctum – sanctorum of the divine,” he says.
Currently showing at the Shridharani Gallery at Triveni Kala Sangam, the entire range of oils on canvas reminds one of tribal art from Madhya Pradesh. There are massive forms of animals and birds, flowers and tree. The texture is rough – great blobs of paint left to dry within the shapes, signifying the pores of the skin, represented by the outline of powerful forms of animals like elephants because “God is powerful and immense too”.
The paintings are devotional, like the bhakti ras found in poetry and music. The style is reminiscent of Sufism, the same abandon and gaiety in reference to the divine who is both the lover and the teacher, the giver and the keeper. Simplicity abounds, again in keeping with the Sufi tradition and tribal art which “the within himself’.
Colours are kept to the bare minimum, subdued shades – monochromatic colours – where different shades of the same colour have been used to the maximum effort. No stark colours for Hem Raj, which is where he perhaps differs from the tribal artists who have a penchant for using bright shades. Indigo blues, olive greens, dusty pinks, murky browns, rusty oranges, pale yellows – Hem Raj is indeed different from them.
Like Sufism, again Hem Raj is concerned only with singing praises of the divine. Unlike a few of his contemporaries who are keen to project contemporary life, the artist has restricted himself to religious themes because according to him this is perhaps the best way to try and be with god while living in a society which is “full of false pride, faithlessness and strife”.
Hem Raj believes an artist is like a flute – it doesn’t pipe of its own. The player is the one who creates the magic of music. Likewise, the comes to naught, he simply becomes a medium. “I am as animate or inanimate as my canvas, brush or colours are. The forms and shapes start talking place the moment I pick up a brush, the painting begins from within me and towards the climax I find myself loosing my own individuality and mingling with the beauty that has flown out of me. That is the ultimate bliss for me. I feel as if I’ve successfully managed to give birth to these forms and in return they are grateful to me for bringing them alive,” – the art and the artist then become one and the same!
The flute remains a mute witness to the ongoing phenomenon of the divine, it lets HIM play as per HIS whim and fancy. The artist, then, is the mute witness-cum-medium of the ‘magic that unfolds before his eyes’. The paintings are no longer that of the artist but are the footprints, symbols, and the reflection of the Magnificent who sometimes appears in the form of a beautiful animal or a bird, or even in the vegetation and the sky. “He is the scriptwriter as also the actor, the director and the producer. He is the form, the shape, the colour, the texture and the shine of my art. And he loves me through all these shapes and sizes,” proclaims the Sufi-artist.
Born on June, 1968, Hem Raj one of the most promising contemporary young artists was initiated into the art by his father who persuaded him into joining the College of Art. But college was limited only to the point where a mother initiates a child into learning to communicate. How he does it and how well depends entirely on the child. For this artist too the art college taught him the basics of creativity, but he preferred to develop his own style instead of limiting himself to a particular genre.
Awards, solo exhibition group shows and workshops have all been cramped into the short span of about four years on his way to being recognized as are artist with a difference. His collection of paintings could be viewed at Lalit Kala Akademi, College of art, Sathiya Kala Parishad besides several private collections in India and abroad the Germans being the most ardent admirers of Hem Raj.
But at a glance, the paintings also seem to be proclaiming rebellion against the present. And at time some of them resemble graffiti on the wall.
KUHU SINGH
The Indian Express
New Delhi Tuesday August 20 1996
Delhi Art World
After seeing the art exhibition of Delhi-born and promising contemporary young artist Hem Raj at Shridharani Gallery titled “Metamorphosing to Devotion,” one could feel that his paintings are devotional like bhakti ras found in poetry and music.
The entire range of oil on canvas reminds one of tribal art from Madhya Pradesh. There are massive forms of animals and birds, flowers and trees, but the texture is rough with great blobs of paint left to dry within the shapes.
The artist, who soars towards the open skies on wind of experimentation and elaborate abstraction, says that an artist is like a flute – it does not pipe of its own. The player is the one who creates the magic of music. Likewise the artist’s own personality comes to naught, he simply becomes a medium.
But, at a glance, the paintings also seem to be proclaiming rebellion against the present. And, at times, some of them resemble graffiti on the wall.
The painter is well versed in his medium and techniques.
Jagdeesh Chawla
Woman’s Era
October 1996
Primitive Strokes
HemRaj’s paintings, which he exhibited in Delhi recently, are like discovering history. That he makes history in the process for one so young is only incidental. In thick oils, he buries symbols for you to pick up – like fossils from another age.
He is very definitely influenced by cave paintings. In his paintings, he has created an ambience of primitive history. His paintings create a dialogue with each other. His treatment of colour has a maturity unexpected in so young an artist. He is a painter who goes beyond his time – into the future with symbols of past – making the present worth living.
Hem Raj:
Passion for the past
Femina
July 8, 1994
Metamorphosis of Hem Raj’s imagery through oil on canvas
His canvases are huge, and overpower the white stark gallery walls. Their theme, Metamorphosis dominates them in their entirety. The painter, exhibiting in Bombay for the first time ever, has concentrated more on imagery than form, but form has not been ignored altogether.
Hem Raj, a 26 year old MFA Delhi University post graduate, has to his credit the Lalit Kala Research Grant in painting for 1993-94. this is his third solo exhibition.
He preferred medium is oil, and he uses colour as an orchestral medium to depict certain ‘evolution’ of thought.
“Bhakti or devotion is very important to me. I start with the basic premise of questioning one’s existence in the scheme of things in this universe. And form this quest I reached the conclusion that everything begins and ends with devotion or love or faith or belief. Call it what you may.”
He has tried to represent devotion through the use of tribal symbols, cave paintings, the male female symbols, cave paintings, inverted hearts, passage like tonal progressions of symbols.
Representations of icons and idols mutate into blurrings of colour and shadow, there is a procession of the microscopic algae like forms and the amoebic squatness of free floating shapes co-exist in a time space warp, an expanding cosmos.
“There are no limitations in my work, there are never any boundaries, nor any land or sea or sky to be seen. The would confine my forms to a finite zone. What I seek to represent is infinity.”
Tantric symbolism is a major part of the symbolism inherent in his work.
Intertwined forms, apex joint triangles, handcuff shapes, layering of colour under knifed out forms, all point to a rootendness in the archaeological heritage of the country.
The patterns shown his work evolve from canvas to canvas, the Metamorphosis is subtle yet discernable, the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth is implicit in the movement of the symbols.
Stylized forms and symbols point back to the Darwinian theory of the evolution of the species.
The one celled protozoans and the primitive species of geomorphic evolution are indicative of the origins of man, and the inheritance from the nebulous interstellar gas clouds.
“I believe a lot in mankind as a species, and it is imperative of us to understand that we have not been created from a vacuum, there is divine force which has created us and which moves us.”
This dependence on a supernatural force, and this infinity, which buffets and cradles the forms of life is sought to be represented by light rays which sweep the canvases.
His work draws heavily on the influence of J. Swaminathan, and he readily admits it. “Basically, my works try to show the interaction between various forms of nature, whether man or animal or plant.”
This premise is inherent in tribal art, which is animistic in its orientation.
The space in the canvas is realiged with a deft handling which belies the apparent naivety of the lines.
As his paintings evolve, one notice a definite evolution of style simultaneous with the theme.
KIRAN SHEIKH
The Asian Age
Bombay
20 May 1994
Yong, but of giant strides
Hemraj, is a young painter who has just finished his moster’s diploma in painting from the College of Art, Delhi. Yet like Sambhavi, be is claiming attention every before he could join the ranks of the established. Indeed, his show at the LTG gallery is a good sing of his having taken off, and with flying colours. For his hands is sure and his imaginative faculties are in their prime.
The clarity Hemraj offers in his imagery, is rather amazing. There is in fact little room for vagueness in his works. The symbolism, both natural as well as geometrical is neat and the structuring of the imagery mature. On the side of colour, there is little flaw and a symphonic harmony is being maintained throughout. The orchestration of shapes with the total structure, and the orchestration of colour with the shapes, are in perfect harmony and emotively live. There could be no faulting on this account.
Titled generally as “Metamorphosis”, Hemraj’s work on oil present to the spectator a world of intense human and biological interaction, win a good share of the cosmos in the totality of the assembly. Sun, moon and starts, and flora and founa are all there, and in active dialogue is on such a plane that it makes the whole world came alive.
It is noteworthy in the case of Hemraj that he is capable of dwelling both in the abstract as well as in the figurative. On the figurative side he makes his creations look like a bio-workshop. And when be delves in the abstract, he makes it appear like a symphony of colours. Out of his works those falling Nos. 2,4,5,7,9, 10, 12 and 13, are an interesting study. They both engage the eye in their detail as well as give it on overall view that is simple to appreciate.
The exhibition is on from Aug. 3 to Aug. 18, 1992.
By: R.S. Yadav
Ideas can be hypothetical, in which they are governed by their own logic and formulate their own meaning. Forms and elements of nature to which Hemraj responds in his works are constantly on the move; patterns of change from moment to moment, a cycle of growth and decay continues. The Elements utilized are rarely descriptive in a literal sense. He seeks to find by means of line, mark, colour, a parallel to the sensations of the generative elements of nature, an activity which has unceasing wonder and potential. The metamorphosis continues, intuitively weaving, one concept into the other in a unified whole. These aspects when pictorially correlated create a particular ambience or mood to which Hemraj attempts to find a visual equivalent.
RAJEEV LOCHAN
Asst. Professor college of Art.
In pursuance of the objective set by the gallery to present exhibitions exploring contemporary tends, including in depth treatment of the work of individual artists and emerging, movement, and provide talented artists with an exposure to wider and discerning audiences, we are herewith sponsoring works of a talented artist Hemraj. We are of conviction that the work of art assumes a full meaning through equally creative response of the spectator. The increasing creative output of our living artists ought to challenge the viewer and enrich his inner life.
GALLERY DIRECTOR
LTG Art Gallery
The large oil painting entitled “Metamorphosis” seems to have as its theme the evolution of life. But its painterly quality makes it totally different form illustrations seen in books of popular science. Stylised forms retain enough fidelity to point generally to protozoan and metazoan species but also manage to be a vocabulary of art. And straddling the picture, all along its height, is the figure of man. There is no cluttering of pictorial space and the colour treatment has a maturity unexpected in so young as artist.
KRISHNA CHAITANYA
The Hindustan Times
The clarity Hemraj offers in his imagery is rather amazing. There is in fact little room for vagueness in his works. The symbolism, both natural as well as geometrical is neat and the structuring of the imagery mature. On the side of colour, there is little flaw and a symbolic harmony is being maintained throughout. The orchestration of shapes with the total structure, and the orchestration of colour with the shapes, are in perfect harmony and emotively live. There could be no faulting on this account. Titled generally as “Metamorphosis”, Hemraj’s works in oil present to the spectator in the totality of the assembly. Sun, moon and stars, and flora and fauna are all there, and in active dialogue with each other. And this dialogue in on such a plane that it makes the whole world come alive.
R.S. YADAV
Evening News
Hemraj relies more on geometry for his metamorphosis paintings in oil. Influenced by cave paintings and folk motifs, Hemraj’s works breathe of primitive stones and thereby an ambience which his its roots grounded in history. At the same time, his thin lines and parallels bring out a modernity in his canvases which is a rare combination with the ancient motifs. Hemraj is guided by hypothetical ideas. He seeks to find a language for the changing faces of nature through colour, line and style most suited to him.
NIVEDITA MOOKERJI
Ideas can be hypothetical, in which they are governed by their own logic and formulate their own meaning. Forms and elements of nature to which Hemraj responds in his works are constantly on the move; patterns of change from moment to moment, a cycle of growth and decay continues. The Elements utilized are rarely descriptive in a literal sense. He seeks to find by means of line, mark, colour, a parallel to the sensations of the generative elements of nature, an activity which has unceasing wonder and potential. The metamorphosis continues, intuitively weaving, one concept into the other in a unified whole. These aspects when pictorially correlated create a particular ambience or mood to which Hemraj attempts to find visual equivalent.
RAJEEV LOCHAN
Asst. Professor College of Art.
The artist as conservationist, and art as a catalyst for environmental conservation. Hem Raj’s art intuitively emphathizes with an intrinsic ethos of conservation. His complex compositions, deceptively simplified forms, set in monochromatic colour detail the degradation of the environment and the exploitation of wildlife by man. They raise questions about or relationship with our natural world and how we relate to it at a subliminal level.
Environmental protection is about ones connection with ones basic life providing roots in nature and all that we are part of. The crisis of the environment begins with a loss of connection with these roots, of identifying ourselves as distinct from and outside the natural world. It leads to a redefinition of our relationship with nature, to one that of exploitation, even to the extent of our destroying the very life giving sources. Otherwise, how can we explain the fact that we have dirtied our air, water and earth? Can we survive without these? Our detachment from the complex web of life is the basis of the current environmental crisis. Hem Raj reminds us of this connection, and questions our denoting only a ‘usage’ value to nature. He is saying that if we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves as a species. He Raj is an environmentalist, and art is his tool for being one.
The world is facing an environmental crisis as never before. In real terms, our progress has been negative. Environmental degradation is causing more loss than the progress we are making. We have decimated our animal population, to the extent that we are not even aware of the number of species that have gone forever. The population fo the majestic tiger has whittled down to a count of less then 4,000, and the Asian elephant is fewer than 20,000 in number. Animals have become only beasts of burden or for showing at zoos, their skins adorning our homes or their fur shawl warming our bodies. Plastics have taken over the planet; they are everywhere, non-destructible and omnipotent. More poor people die, or are affected today from a loss of their resources and chemical pollution than ever before. This century has seen some of the worst industrial disasters ever, and the tragedy of Bhopal is still etched on the face of its suffering survivors. We have learned to plunder and take from the earth, but not to respect or be part of nature. Progress is being measured in material terms, but our loss is immeasurable. As Hem Raj’s paintings show, the crisis is everywhere, but basically it is inside ourselves.
Art not created for usage, but an instinctive reaction to the world, finds use, as in Hem Raj’s work. This time not as a commodity, but as a feeling which we experience and which draws us inwards towards our deepest selves, in a meditative way. It brings out the conservationist in us, and reminds us of the basic but essential linkages we have with the world around us. This art hence becomes ‘useful’ as a catalyst towards environmental protection, and hopefully will help bring more people into its fold. Each person has to be an environmentalist, and his or her actions governed by a feeling of spiritual oneness with the world. Hem Raj’s paintings are powerful reminders to help reconnect with what is basic to life itself, and to us.
RAVI AGARWAL
Chief Coordinator
Srishti Environmental NGO
An Ozone For Spirit
It has been rightly said that one of the sure tests of artistic talent is the evidence of not only continuing but also ever intensified singularity. Now having been witness to this painter’s pilgrim’s progress for the last several years, I believe I’m not putting myself in excessive jeopardy by opining that Hem Raj seems to foot the bill. His work like those of all genuine art workers – embodies a fine degree of clarity, precision, and sharp pictorial detail. If this is true for now, I hope to God that he continues in this same fashion in time to come. I say this last, aware of those Maras of great blandishment that now lie in wait for all honest souls in this our proud seat of power, pelf, and dubious patronage bursting at the seams. The thirty winking pieces of silver have undone the promise of not a few of our artists.
Well, for the moment, we must rejoice considering what the painter has turned out by a slow but considered application of mind and sensibility to his canvases. I would say that what mature with him is his handling of colour, of pigment. Such richness and nevertheless he steers clear of the muddiness and squalor as seems endemic with many of our appliers of oil on canvas. The treatment of the same is here judicious, so well blent, and varied of hue, that our eyes dote on the objects; they linger and savour the delightful taste of the grain, of texture. So most certainly first and foremost your senses have to be entrapped by works of art and only then would our inner censor allow the ingress of heavier stuff like any concealed proposed meanings or social messages.
This present work carries some of those messages viz. the fate of the mute members of creation, but this is done entirely discreetly, that is without treading on our artlover’s tingling toes.
This is the very sort of composition that delivers us from the ugliness and stupidity in those of the image of man, which have invaded much contemporary painting. It does so by getting past the human figure in crass urban surroundings. Here, instead a sense of beauty of rhythm and harmony and of the pleasures of the intelligence – permeated eye is assured. And so too in much similar art, by other fine practitioners of it, a true enough creative subjectivity awakens to itself, but at the same time awakening one to the root reality. Here therefore is a single process, which is poetic knowledge; and then, at the same time, the way, which the free creativity of spirit enters into act, is essentially poetic intuition – that grasping of the inner essence of things and the self into one spontaneous authentic emotion. Such poetic intuition does quite as it pleases with natural appearances. It catches them in its inner music. In that sense Hem Raj’s chosen works, and there are a considerable number of them, quicken emotion as also abet in affection and tenderness. This then is a work with its still intact, creative subjectivity in place.
It is significant that the majority of Hem Raj’s images are botanical. He assimilates the human to the vegetal, he is conscious of humanity and of fauna, but as flora. And quite like members of the vegetable world, all these seem to solicit a pure subject in order that they may pass from a state of blind warfare to the state of peace. Thus this is purified experiencing, the clarified perceptions of what obtains at the base of our contemplating minds, and that despite their relentless self attrition and utilitarian grasping. Such then is the life of our slumbering subjectivity, overlaid as it is by the imperious demands of the present civilization. So, the intellect in this art is an instrument, an adjunct to our awakening to the harmonious duet of self and the said root world. And with these same sort of artistic acts, as though a heavy stone is lifted off our chests. Yes, we of the day are, so overly, pinned under our own frantic needling and doings.
To be sure the painter is following in the line of a tradition. But then he appears to have made it his personal faith. His feeling for the mute, tongueless creatures is all too quietly and unvociferously sought to be given a voice. But a blatant propagation, even for a noble cause, it is not. Not, it is a calm union with the vulnerable; the compassionate look of a kindly feeling eye.
The better artwork is, as every, unpurposivly purposive just natural and unintentional. So this work too. I would not like to paraphrase its content. This can be done, but by killing its spirit. The emotional correlative to the object of all art becomes part of the matter dealt with and is not communicated to the auditors like an infection, not inflicted mechanically like a bullet or knife would, not administered like a poison. No, not all that but simply presented in its being; quietly contemplated as a pattern of life-renewing knowledge. An ozone for spirit.
The select of Hem Raj’s offerings, discharge their true artistic duties honorable. In other words they express, and convey, the joy of being more human.
KESHAV MALIK
Poet and Art Critic
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