Art for activism

into the light Ajay Gulati uses texture to enhance his works

Ajay Gulati has a longstanding grouse with media. Showing me a file with all articles written on him neatly arranged, he laments at how the media while having recognised his work, has always bypassed the message behind it. I grow both nervous and curious. The artiste, with a formidable repertoire of paintings that have been exhibited around the clearly doesn’t want to talk about his achievements. “I observe as I am deeply intrigued by the phenomena that elevate consciousness. I work to absorb and share the essence of these special moments that inspire and bring realisation,” says his profile statement. Asked about the phenomenon that has moved him the most, he says it is violence against women. And he sure means it. He talks figures while I sit stunned at his level of research. It took him years, he says, and travelling to places across the world to realise there was so much that needed to be said.

His work, according to him, is the means to take the message to people, something he feels would have been difficult for him if he were to get into full-time activism. “I would have been beaten up or arrested if I were to take out rallies or sit on dharnas.”

Themes behind his works bear testimony to his commitment to social issues. Take “Apology”, which is “an apology on the behalf of men for hurting, dominating and abusing women in every possible way, since the first caveman dragged a woman by her hair” or “Lies” which is the quest to find the elusive truth, his body of work does more than just appeal to the aesthete. Ajay, who has a degree in chemical engineering, has also learnt mixology and bartending, and is a percussionist and a chef.

He took to painting in 1989, and has, over the years, worked with clay, fibreglass, acrylics and oil. His studies in isometrics and perspective drawing, he says, help him explore depths of a third dimension on a two-dimensional surface. He uses texture to enhance his drawings, to combine matter and thought. In his series, Lies, he shows a web of stark lines in the background and a consistent light emerging from the centre of the paintings to define the conflict between the lies and the truth.

The coming of age of Indian art with an exponential growth in the number of galleries and the subsequent boom in the sale of art, Ajay concedes has been encouraging but adds that he is wary of compromised quality of work and fading of the purpose behind art.

In his latest series of paintings, The Signs, he talks of signs that life shows us and of confusion and fear when we ignore them.

The Signs is exhibited at Studio Napean, Mumbai, till December 24. For information on the artiste, visit www.ajaygulati.com, and to find out more on the exhibition, visit www.studionapean.com.

This column features those who choose to veer off the beaten track.

SNIGDHA POONAM

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