“Abstract work of Hem Raj contemporary artist Making of Idiosyncratic Visual Vocabulary”

Abstractionism as a creative mode of expression in visual arts hit the Indian shores perhaps sometimes in the late sixties of the last century.  Many Indian artists joined the trend that had already peaked in the Western world of art much before.  As a late arrival on the Indian scene, the trend continued through the seventies and eighties, though the pace slackened significantly thereafter as more and more artists branched off into anecdotal modes of expression.  This is as it is perhaps the case in the Western horizon where presently super-realism seems to have come to occupy the centre stage.  For that matter, much of the contemporary discourse on art is now taken up with the booming phenomenon of super-realism in the Western world. 

 

Coming back to the Indian scene, while many artists have followed anecdotal trends very few seem to have continued with the trend of abstractionism.  Hem Raj who belongs to the latter group grew up watching all these epochal events in the art world. And, for quite some years now, he has continued to paint his abstract works with great conviction and panache.  As a young painter, Hem Raj found a niche among art lovers and connoisseurs both in India and abroad.  His works have traveled to galleries in Germany and other International art destinations.  A product of Delhi College of Art, he has been a prolific painter for nearly two decade now.  Seven years after his MFA (College of Art, Delhi)) he picked up the prestigious National Award (Lalit Kala Akademi) in 2000. 

 

A lover of Sufi music, Hem Raj draws his inspiration from such mystical invocations and comes up with his esoteric visual metaphors.  As he himself confesses he is like that maverick Sufi saint who with his raised arms towards the sky utters a string of meaningless sound while praying to the almighty and thus giving release to his boundless emotion of love and devotion.  Somewhat perhaps in the same manner, Hem Raj too seems to have developed a purely idiosyncratic visual vocabulary to bare his own self out on the canvas. The irregular freakish lines and scratches on the canvas are like the gibber of the soulful prayer of the Sufi saint who could not bring himself to making intelligible utterances.                     

                          

While on his lone artistic journey, Hem Raj rues that his creative genius would often rebel against conformism even if “guidelines” came from his own well-meaning teachers. This soft-spoken and modest young artist certainly has fire in his belly.  The artist recalls the early childhood memories of his visits to his maternal grandmother’s home in the midst of idyllic environs which seem to have had a lasting influence on him.  The dwelling places with their cow dung-clay coated walls enlivened in the young mind as he grew fond of the texture on the walls with occasional hand-drawn lines and designs on them.  As a young boy, Hem Raj felt fascinated by the look of these walls and often mused over the muted symphony of textural designs.  Indeed, he could almost lovingly caress the tactile surface through his eyes.

 

A thinking artist, Hem Raj meticulously keeps record of the goings on in his mind during the process of creation.  While the work is in progress he would jot down his thoughts and ideas related to it. Often he would be receptive to the promptings that the work would throw up towards its finality. In one such noting he expresses his desire to perceive the inside of his own body as also to go into the inner recesses of any figure or shape for that matter.  Such intimacy with the world of forms could be felt only by means of their tactile perception.  Surely, the silent touch of a person needs no language to convey emotions.  For that matter, the mother’s gentle touch, the teacher’s benign pat, or the clasping hands of the lovers transcend words.  It seems, for Hem Raj too, purity of emotions is given in the tactile sense, untainted by words.  In his characteristic way by rendering the tactile space visible, he dispenses with whatever comes in the way of apprehending the feeling directly.

 

The artist’s predilection for greens and blues with occasional touches of yellow and black mark his earlier works.  But warmer hues of red, orange and umber come to dominate in the works of a later phase.  Some of these works seem almost to breathe the scent of freshly watered earth. There is also a monumental quality that attaches to the large-size works of Hem Raj.  He builds up the picture space with swathes of different hues of emerald or sap greens, blues, or crimson lake, sometimes by the use of rollers, and then works into them capricious textural irregularities topped up with apparently stray scratches and sharp lines.  In his latest works done in black and white, the artist creates a sheer sense of drama and mystery by bringing into play their tonal variations. The finished work always has an unalterable finality that bespeaks of a hidden source of coherence.  One might say there is a carefully orchestrated carelessness which catches the unmixed innocence of feeling.  

 

 Defiance against any pre-given structure or pattern drives the artist in coming to grips with the aesthetic point.  Enigma of empty spaces haunts Hem Raj.  Perhaps, the only way to encounter such spaces is by means of the tactile sense which is direct, immediate, and unhindered by the clutter of words or symbols.  As you look at the surface of his painting you are invited to enter into the space on the other side of it.  For Hem Raj, it is not the object as it looks, but rather the way it feels that carries him along in his work relentlessly.  He detaches the lines and shapes of colour on the canvas from their associated conventional forms and objects of the physical world and in the process vests these plastic elements with a distinct autonomy of their own.  Indeed, these are no more slaves to the configuration of the objective world of our sense experience.  They stand liberated from their context. 

 

Sensitivity to the surface texture of painted walls is of enduring interest to the artist.  When formal language fails to accommodate the depth and volume of emotion it must gush out unmindful of the mode of expression.  The large body of abstract works of Hem Raj takes us into a world that throbs with life, each work cascading into a sheer volcano of untamed emotion. 

                                                                                                     Ranjan Ghosh 

About the Contributor

Ranjan K. Ghosh is an aesthetician, artist, critic and academic; has published several books on aesthetics and art; his papers have appeared in journals including The British Journal of Aesthetics, and The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (USA); has taught Philosophy at Delhi University and North Bengal University; has held several exhibitions of his drawings and paintings; is based in Delhi and writes regularly on art and philosophy; presently Chairman, ISAA (Interdisciplinary Society for Art & Aesthetics). E-mail: ranjanghosh14@gmail.com>