Artist Palaniappan
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

At Dhan Mill, Nature Morte’s unveiling of Rm Palaniappan’s Finite and Infinite is an odyssey of the poetry of light and lines against his sparse abstract renditions that echo an artistic practice born of a domain immersed in abstraction. Palaniappan who was former Secretary Lalit Kala Akademi was an astute administrator and is a greatly distinguished practitioner of art in Tamil Nadu. His most epic exhibition as administrator to date at LKA was the National Art Exhibition of 2011, held after 17 years in Chennai.

From his newest works that use acrylic on canvas in a variety of sizes to the beauty of tangled and meandering lines that embrace multiple angles, his works wrap around our senses. There is a beauty of aerobic enchantment amidst numbers and grainy gravitas.

Artwork A Mutual Alliance by RmPalaniappan on display at his exhibition Finite and Infinite in Delhi
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Palaniappan once stated: “ The only true reality lies in the interaction between the physical and the psychological. I am to capture this movement in my work.”

The artist’s trajectory is seen in lithe contours that change colours in progression. Curator and director, Peter Nagy, says, Palaniappan’s works ‘ suggest life’s journey within aerial military cartographies that add geographical perspective.’

From finite to infinite

Artwork Space Between A Survey by RmPalaniappan on display at his exhibition Finite and Infinite in Delhi
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Palaniappan says: “Only someone flying in space can make a three-dimensional drawing and stretch it to infinity, thus expressing complete human freedom.” Critic and author Sadanand Menon describes it as “a neutral, non-anthropomorphic space carrying images of unnameable places and their visual representations, whether terrestrial or planetary or astronomical. It is a kind of experimental geography and the possibility of proposing radical landscapes.”

Palaniappan’s love for sciences, mathematics and astronomy find their way into a lifelong art practice that reveals his fascination with the dynamics of the flying machine. This exhibition is a textural terrain of a visual vocabulary that recurs as maps, grids, and aerial terrains in his historic evolution.

Consummate medley

Artwork Mystical Truth by RmPalaniappan on display at his exhibition Finite and Infinite in Delhi
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Within a medley of notations, marks, cyphers, and signs into densely layered graphic ensembles, it is the graphic elements, hand colouring, and multiplicity that renders each work unique. Finite and Infinite is also a mapping of deeper considerations of time, space, and movement and his love for transcending the linearity of the physical world within the web of his personal experience.

Transitioning from prints to drawings in the late 1980s, Palaniappan concentrated on line as his visual tool describing the trajectories as a moving object or body that travels through space and time. His works are a play of visual aesthetics in slow time. They demonstrate a subtle yet highly sophisticated use of colour and a continued interest in diagrammatic notations and graphic strategies. A constant in his work is his lifelong fascination with the emotional impact of light within lines, light not as shimmer but as an iridescent reflection, and a radiant force associated with the resilient release of boundless energy that sifts and sieves.

Palaniappan’s family was involved with the commercial and graphic arts, his father being a distributor of calendar art and later his brothers owned printing and packaging companies. Palaniappan’s artistic practice from the late 1970s (when he was in art college) to the early 2000s was entirely dedicated to printmaking, collages, and graphic works on paper. This history is retained in the paintings today, as the borders of each are demarcated with contrasting colours, numbers hover in the margins, and the target devices used for registration are still present.

You recall the great Mark Rothko who said: ‘ Silence is so accurate.’

Artwork Interwoven Realities by RmPalaniappan on display at his exhibition Finite and Infinite in Delhi
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

(At Dhan Mill, Chattarpur ; Till June 8; 10am to 9pm)

The writer is an art curator and critic