We were looking for artists from India who were working and living overseas. Safrani is originally from Hyderabad but has been living and lecturing in New York for over 30 years now. He is very knowledgeable about ancient Indian art and has very sensitively, and rather romantically, bridged the gap between the old and the new. When I say "old", I mean his iconography, like the image of Buddha. And "new" is the technique of collage that he uses. There is this particular work where he has used a navigational map of the East coast of the United States. On top of that he has put an image of a seated Buddha in a pose where he is touching the ground. Safrani has also taken a lot of symbolism from nature. In another work, he has placed a chrysanthemum next to this image, which is again related to the Buddha.He uses soft colours when he paints. "Cool" like blue and sea green. Of course one can see more vibrant colours, like orange and red, but I see calmness and tranquility in his collages.
His paintings are inoils. They are very abstract. It is like seeing two entirely different personality's work. There are a range of shades in one painting, and they are all totally different. If it's green there are all shades of green, and if it's yellow, again there are hues of yellow.
Hanging this show has proved quite a challenge for us. We have been looking at his works for over two months now and have had heated discussions on how to exhibit it. Finally we divided his works in two sections, where we used colour as the guiding source. Also, you need a lot of distance to view the paintings, whereas for collages one needs to get pretty close. It is going to be interesting to see how the audience moves back and forth during the exhibition.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
Printer-friendly page