An idea embedded in the visual

I love calligraphy in any language but taking it many steps forward is Parameshwar Raju’s pictorial calligraphy. Using the technique of nib strokes from the thinnest to the broadest in one single stroke, he creates images that tell the whole tale. And in perfect timing for the Christmas season, he presents his latest show “From the Three Wise Men to the Tree of Celebration; Journey of a breath.”

The exhibition comprises 25 works on display depicting the story of Jesus in Parameshwar’s lucid, pictorial calligraphy style. Mythologies and narratives play a pivotal role in his works. “Not just as a point of reference but as an engagement to excavate forms from within,” says curator Koeli Mukherjee Ghose.

Moving away from the confines of basic calligraphy, Parameshwar combines his sense of liberation with calligraphy, delivering an idea embedded in the visual. Narrating complex episodes in his simple minimalist visualisations ensues. His work imbibes a sense of presence that enables his viewers to be familiar with events and happenings from the past.

Paintings of Jesus Christ and his life is found from the earliest period of Christianity. Over a period of time the narrative has been re-imagined through stylistic genres. Parameshwar’s series of the story of Jesus began during his exhibition titled ‘Timeless Art’ at the MOSA in Brussels in the year 2014.

His childhood memories, of studying at the St Vincent Convent, where he visited the church often are vivid. He remembers taking part in the Nativity processions during Christmas. He recalls those endless discourses on religion between his grandfather who worshipped Shiva and the priest of the church. These discussions would take place often in his home. Young Parameshwar’s absorption of the conversations perhaps gained a visual form. These recollections perhaps seeped into his work and added this new series to celebrate “Forms of Devotion”.

Parameshwar Raju’s works reflect the notion of present-ism and eternal-ism in its ordering of realities in a cerebral manner. His works convey the thought that at a certain time certain things exist and others do not. This is the only reality one can deal with. And in an alignment to an eternist thought he believes that time is an aspect of reality and equals to the three spatial dimensions — past, present and future and because of this, all things that are once experienced or brought to conscious knowledge is just as real as things in the present are.

He refers to the study of traditional texts that explains that the universe goes through repeated cycles of creation, destruction and rebirth, with each cycle lasting 4,320,000 years. And almost certainly this has nurtured a strong passion for history, traditional Indian customs, rituals and folklore and their preservation in his work. In the present series the narrative in calligraphy is not written in words but depicted visually in his personalised style of thin, thick and thin progression of strokes. The narrative is defined as retelling of something that happened.

In this work Parameshwar creates an essence of the main incidents reflecting the life of Jesus and Christian symbolism. The images are as follows: Menorah, Flower with four petals, Sacred Heart, Triquetra, a three-part interlocking fish symbol, Madonna, Three Wise Men, The flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, the Christmas tree, Simon and Jesus, Sermon on the Mount, Jesus carrying the Cross, Pieta and the Holy Cross. These images are a recollection of the fact that sacrifice of the divinity yields to the day to day celebrations in human life.

Another show that harks to narratives with a Hindu perspective of young boys who were submitted into brahmacharya is Praveen D Upadhye’s Dal-Punj the Sound of Bells, an exhibition of paintings expressing the confusion of the mind. It is an interplay of values and emotions in this Brahmachari series as Upadhye dips into memories of an ashram adjacent to the school where he spent his childhood.

The saffron robes of the young Brahmachari boys reminiscent of the flowing robes donned by ascetics visiting his family. The ashram was also home to those just initiated into the order: young, impressionable and vulnerable, these boys swathed in the colours of sacrifice had surrendered not only the pleasures of the youth they had not seen, they had also written off the innocent joys of boyhood. Symbolic of childhood, kites in a myriad colours soaring in the sun, riding the tip of slender strings, in a vain attempt to match the height of the sky, testing the strength of other kites surveying the clouds, they are all there.

Dr Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist and can be contacted on alkaraghuvanshi@yahoo.com