My name is red
Vincent Van Gogh told his brother Theo that “I want to paint red, I want to paint red, I want to paint red with all the passion in my heart.” The colour red is a constituent of the spectrum of colours, a signifier par excellence which allows artists to explore its innate and implied characteristics. As a culmination of a trilogy of shows based on colour, Jose Abad has curated the show And the Red based on art created around the colour red.
The colour red is elemental, standing for heat and passion. It is also the colour of aggression and its containment, of danger, be it material and sexual. It is the colour of sentimental and sexual love, as also the colour of marital love that is used not only in bridal attire but also in the sindoor or vermillion. It is the colour associated with the fecund and propitious aspects of the world, the colour of Lakshmi; also the colour of the bridal mystical surrender and union in Laali tere laal ki.
Kanchan Chander’s two works explore the relationship between red as a colour, as a texture and as an idea in an art work and an artist’s consciousness to the fullest. The colour red serves as the backdrop, the aegis against which her deeply personal experiences find sublimation as paradigmatic art in the two works Relocation and Watch My Play. These works touch the personal side of Kanchan — just as story telling reflects special moments of the artist’s life.
Relocation depicts the artist’s deep sense of loss and displacement depicted in the background through the references to her old home that was demolished. Three stages of destruction of the house are juxtaposed with three generations of her family — her mother, the artist herself and her son. The absent members, her late father and her brother, appear in a shadowy form.
Watch my Play is a more playful work that talks of parental attachments and compulsions. It sort of a composition of memories from travels and dramas in which her son participated and acted.
— Dr Seema Bawa is an art historian, curator and critic
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