Artist Pallav Chander’s show at Alliance Francaise reflects the chaos in society due to the growing dependence of people on social media. By Uma Nair
In order to take a closer look at other realms of artistic expressions, one must observe an emerging artist’s work to understand what occupies her/him.
Artist Pallav Chander’s show at Alliance Francaise represents the emotional meaning of geometric shapes and their relationship with one another in his own life. To some extent, it seems like a point and line to planar levels, more like a logical extension of the principles of intuitive and experiential patterns that the artist has come across during his emotional odyssey.
Space and form
Pallav creates a kitsch combination of geometric abstractions that seem to be precisely engineered. For him, art is a medley of moulded and mixed drawings that build a unity of space and form between its shapes and motifs like some architectural diagram showcasing a tangent of possibilities. A conscious product of Pallav’s bizarre-looking utopia brings us to his own theories, yet some works of rare beauty which represent an artist’s blue-print of a dream coming to reality.
Drama in titles
Pallav has used dramatic titles — Broken Chords, Mad World — and each of them have a rare resonance to each other. He says, “Whenever I title my work, I have a theatrical approach to it. It’s either a statement or just one or two words defining my work and mainly manipulating the viewer to not get a straight answer regarding the definition of the painting. It is left for the viewer to extract his/her own interpretation.”
A closer look at the artworks speaks of material foundations by focussing on the construction rather than on the conception of objects. It makes one recall constructivists who often worked with modest, raw or industrial materials, such as wood, iron, glass and steel. Many of their works, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional in form, were characterised by their austere, angular geometric shapes. Pallav goes beyond that in using deeper and wider spectrum of shapes and colours.
He explains, “For example, Mad World is trying to define the chaos in our society due to the information age we live in, where social media has become a platform where people are craving for likes and follows from strangers just to get approval. It represents the peer pressure and people’s demand for an external validation for their moves.”
Explaining other titles, The Double Face, The Fake World, The Selfie Couple, The Pout Expert, he says that all these works depict some part of the hypocrisy in our society today. While on the other hand, the title Broken Chords Can Sing a Little reflects hope. The artwork has been given an organised yet a chaotic street art feel to it. It aims to give out messages of hope from a subjective angle.
Textural terrain
Art should reflect the modern industrial world and above all, be accessible to the masses. Pallav’s art is relevant in a rapidly changing world. It’s free from academic tradition and devoid of any ambiguous, fashionable or subjective properties. Textures are replete in his canvas.
He says, “The textures in my works are a major part of my art process as most of the time, I paint more than three things on the same canvas. So the texture from my previous works leave an impression on the new one. This process leaves kind of a chaotic but a balanced impression in the work, which I feel is a satisfactory result in terms of its visual appeal.”
The show presents an entirely new language of colours and movements. Pallav has a very keen idea of spatial, light and design details to create works that draw a fine line between non-figurative and decorative art. An unforgettable suite of works comes as no surprise because he is the son of the versatile and talented Kanchan Chander.
