Black & White
by James C.W.Chae
Bangalore, India. 1998.
to be shown
in
The Kin : Indo-Korean Trio Exhibition
(C.W.Chae, Wilfred Polycarp, Siddharth P. Battjewargi)
August 25 to 31, 1998
Chitrakala Parishath
Bangalore, India
B&W 12-V-98 / oil,cocofiber on canvas. 122x122cms. 1998.
PASSIONATE SEARCH
DECCAN HERALD
Mon. 7 September 1998
The three young members of KIN, a Korean-Indian Association share an experience of studying at Santiniketan, through what they paint differs largely in terms of aesthetics and themes, the only common ground appearing to be the fact that they are all still searching for a personal idiom and concerns. The latter is betrayed despite the obvious efforts to prove the firm establishment of individuality and vision.
Actually, it is the very stress on a particular, but eventually quite vague and decorative, formal language on the one hand, and on profound content on the other hand, both bearing insufficient expressive connectedness, that indicates an early phase in the artists’ careers.
Skilled and attractive decorativeness, even one achieved with an indulgent energy and flair, comes through the work of Chang Wan Chae. Emphasising tactile textural and tonal qualities in his black and white compositions, the artist plays with multitudes of well-known contemporary formal elements adopted rather formalistically and with properties of concrete materials, while allusions to Far Eastern painting traditions surface inconspicuously. The highly literary titles of paintings cannot make them more valid.
Wilfred Policarp’s images are the sole ones here which disclose a continuation of the Santiniketan heritage seen in the merger of indistinctly contemporised indigenous mannerisms, through which a gentle ｅxpressionist touch strives to endow the almost naive scenes with notes of the mysterious and the sacred.
A somewhat bolder and sincere idiom, through stylized too and nearing a pattern, belongs to Siddarth P Battjewarji who dwells on intense, dark or awkward and strained sides of the human psyche and relationships. With a certain facility, but also with some unwanted pleasantness, he steers a realist basis towards a slightly loud ｅxpressionistic overstatement. ■ By Marta Jakimowicz-Karle
B&W 18-V-98 / oil,cocofiber on canvas. 60x60cms. 1998.
B&W 22-V-98 / oil,cocofiber on canvas. 60x60cms. 1998.
B&W 27-V-98 / oil,cocofiber on canvas. 122x61cms. 1998.
B&W(A)-IV-98 / oil,cocofiber on canvas. 46x46cms. 1998.
B&W(B)-IV-98 / oil,cocofiber on canvas. 46x46cms. 1998.
B&W(C)-IV-98 / oil,cocofiber on canvas. 46x46cms. 1998.
Deccan Herald, Mon. 7 September 1998
??? Aug. 31, 1998
Leaflet for The Kin : Indo-Korean Trio Exhibition