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A room with a view
JOS MARTIN L.X. doesn't go far in search of his subject matter. The pocket-sized room where he lives, along with the adjoining men's room, springs up ideas and provides ample visual material to this young painter.
His pictures are about still lives; effects that he encounters through the motions of his day, the switchboard with a plug, the ventilator in his room that acts a buffer between his solitary haven and the ruckus corridor outside or even the elements of a sparse, beat-up restroom. "These are items and commodities near me that have become so much a part of my life. Almost an extension of my own body," says Martin, who doesn't merely record his observations but makes a studied commentary on them.
Through the use of intense and vivid colours that he plasters on blank, uninviting walls, the painter details feelings of loneliness and fear. Besides the rooms and the subtexts that he weaves into them, Martin has made a couple of portraits of himself, his friends and even a photographic assembly of his family. His phobias and anxieties get reinforced in these smaller canvases, done in oil pastels on cardboard, which display crouching figures and those on the run. The strokes are free-flowing and sharp, collectively an indication of a potential waiting to grow and mature.
Even as the show that was on at Durbar Hall recently was his debut solo presentation, earlier in the year, Martin was part of Lalita Kala Academy's annual exhibition. His `Room 1' was selected for the State exhibition of art and the reason his works are well received, he says, is because he paints straight from the heart. No wonder then that this art school graduate draws parallel with Vincent van Gogh, seeking inspiration from this master in the treatment of his ideas. "I have to know the history of my themes and that's the reason why I don't go to virtually unexplored areas."
The exhibition closed on November 17.
SUNANDA KHANNA
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