“The Incommensurable” Hemraj contemporary artist

Great and genuine artists have always had their own handwriting! Clearly identifiable, even if they undergo a vivid and intriguing development of their art and style, over the years. If we talk of of Picasso  - whether  you look at his early paintings of the blue or pink period or at his later works of the Fauve movement, he was always himself. We see a similar authenticity and marked typical style that makes Hemraj noteworthy throughout his whole creative period. 

Hemraj shows a tremendous development through the last 25 years. His new works,show all characteristics already well known from his early years in spite of the evolution that has been subtly seeping in. But there is a phinominal wealth of new personality that his works exude that intrigues the onlooker now. In the eighties his pictures were titled "Metamorphosis", showing enigmatic signs, very often of tantric genesis depicting the creation of mankind, the derivation from a creator-god with somehow dark but intense colors. We could decipher stars, snakes, flowers, stylized male and female reproductive organs, the Hindu forms of lingam and yoni, and cosmic patterns, like mandalas and visual mantras.  

Later on, his works were called "Thou", celebrating the great creation of the world through an almighty God, evocative and addressing Him with this traditional archaic - ecclesiastical sound. The signs and symbols that lived in those pictures were similar where the concept of the artist's world remained the same, to sing the praises of God and creation. He opened his eye towards heaven, his color bands acting like windows into another world. Hemraj wanted to show the world above us that is mirrored in our own imagination.  

His most recent series that has evolved leads the artist to a choice of the new title for his new series - Voices of God. Once more we admire the subtle colors, the reds, greens and mauve's; once more we are attracted by the enigmatic signs and symbols that travel over the canvas.  The forms may be well known, but they take another rhythm, develop larger sizes and very often spread out in a very quiet uniform movement, equally filling the color fields of the background.  Hemraj, as he states, envisages the voice of God in his creations, sees his appearance in trees, flowers, stars and manifold other elements of our surrounding world. He understands the whole world as the appearance of the Almighty and he understands himself as the one who reads those semblances and symbolic entities and transforms them into art. Art, for him, is a constant and stable messenger of the "Voices of God". 

If, however you want to read Hemraj's pictures without knowing his intentions, you can easily read them as brilliant abstract masterpieces that entice you to dive deep into a symphonized world of forms and colors that knock softly, opening the mind for wonderful dreams and fantastic voyages into a realm of beauty and spiritual enticement. There is never something redundant in there! The space his pictures capture is always full of consequence and necessitated by the stringency of his pictorial will. Some of his latest works reveal a tendency to travel even deeper into the picture's space, the space defined with means of sometimes dark, but often also absolutely luminous color fields.  This results in a dreamy hovering atmosphere, more mystic than intellectual, which relates to the earlier works of the Metamorphosis series.  

But Hemraj in some works also shows us how the world is covered with an impenetrable though seemingly transparent veil, enclosing the revelation of signs and symbols behind a scarcely open monochrome color shield, either covering almost the whole canvas or depicting and demonstrating this enclosure with broad bands of color. The not visible is always a mystery and calls on to be discovered. Maybe in a way the artist is afraid to be too outspoken while revealing his concept of the "Voices of God" and wants to show this fear of the undecipherable. The veiled, be it in reality or metaphorically, has always challenged the true seeker to find it impossible to suppress the urge to unveil the unknown, the hidden.  We desire and yet fear discovery. Some great artists of today like the Austrian Arnold Rainer or even Frank Stella and of course Andy Warhol has displayed a similar brush with art.   

 

Great art is always "in commensurable”, not to be measured, as the most famous German poet and writer Goethe said about his masterwork "Faust" - a plot that follows  the voyage of a spiritual seeker from Heaven to Hell, from his historical  time into classical Greece,  the mythological underworld of many civilizations,  and finally back to Heaven , when critics asked him for an explanation about  the philosophical contents of his drama. Hemraj likes to explain the ideas that lead him to do his artwork. But he allows you as well to follow your own path of exploring this spiritual continent - and what wonders do you find there one way or the other! 

Ernst W. Koelnsperger(Germany)Art Collector and Art Critic2015