0 + 0 = 0 (my father’s mathematics)

Born 1983 in Kerala, Siji R. Krishnan attained a BFA from the Raja Ravi Varma College of Fine Arts In Kerala and an MFA from the Sarojini Naidu School of Fine Arts in Hyderabad. ‘Paternal Instincts’ (2010) a solo exhibition of her paintings was held at Kashi Art Gallery, Cochin.

Among her recent participations are 5th Anniversary Exhibition (2011), Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai; India Art Summit (2011), New Delhi; ‘Her Work Is Never Done’ (2010), Gallery BMB, Mumbai and ‘Unfaithfully Yours’ (2010), Gallery SKE, Bangalore. A new solo show of her work takes place at Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke.

Recording sensations of body and its memory, painting, for Siji R.Krishnan, is a simultaneous act of recovering experiences from the past and chronicling sensations in the present. A catalogue essay by Rakhi Peswani elaborates: “She neatly blends the figural and the gestural on the paper, the surface resonating a thin film of inferences, like a very fragile projection of dreams under our eyes, while we sleep.”

She visualizes this interiority as an abstract space of reflection, concentration, transformations and discoveries. Perhaps it is the painter’s studio that becomes an insulated cocoon for undertaking mental voyages.  And the painting, the painted surface becomes that device which helps in activating the zone.

The mundane, when framed in her work, is masked with subtle humor, draped with melancholia, though, always evocative of the textural and the gestural within the act of Painting. Here, the point becomes not to represent, but to slowly realize and delicately release the imaginary through images. The painting only becomes a residue of this larger process. Krishnan’s images, in this sense are reminders of the rich heritage of Painting, its delicate capacities to both stimulate and simulate, and its intrinsic ability to create subversive trails. The body of works conforms to and exults in the Living Language.