Surendran Nair’s first solo in the US

A solo exhibition of recent works by artist Surendran Nair takes place at Frey Norris Gallery, San Francisco - incidentally his first solo in the US. Its title ‘Neti, Neti’ refers to the BrahadAranyaka Upanishad.. It includes new paintings from ‘Elysium’, and the ‘Doctrine of the Forest’, as well. The two sections belong to the series Cuckoonebulopolis; all inventive ‘Itinerant Mythologies', the title of a recent monograph.

Summing up the spirit of the show and the artist’s work process, a note by art scholar Ranjit Hoskote mentions:

“Delighting in the condition of paradox, these paintings assume various forms: they come at us as puzzling riddles and private jokes, mumbled asides and deafening proclamations, knife-edged critiques and tender parodies, baroque satires and impish elegies…Nair regards painting as no less interactive a medium than the installation or the digital interface: a coded yet inviting communication around which artist and viewer choreograph a productive dialogue.”

'Neti, Neti' is comprised of paintings on canvas and paper. The artist explains that the title literally means: not this not this or, not this not that; or, neither this nor that. Yagjavalkya, the Upanishadic philosopher employed this particular approach of apophasis to describe the nature of the absolute, the Brahman, or God, the Supreme Being, when he was asked to do so by his students."

The brightly colored centerpiece portrays an actor with a false blue arm hanging from a neck contraption. The artist adds, "I was thinking of the figure of a Vidushaka (clown) here, who, in the Sanskrit theatre of Kerala plays different roles, like the stage manager or the sutradhar (the one who holds the strings), the initiator of the play, the hero's friend or 'side-kick', comic relief etc. etc. Shakespeare's fool in King Lear to some extant could be considered somewhat as a comparable."

A tiny masked man, based on a Greek sculpture of a comic-actor looms in the background supporting a flaming trident. Lovers (ShriParvatheeveekshanapriyan and Kaushiki Puramjanam) at Playful Leisure (2010) is an intricate and complex painting situated in a theatrical ritualized space.