Critical Appraisal of "Dreaming of Life & Time"

When an artist does a solo show for the first time, it is an important statement, it is a sign that the artist has emerged from his or her private world into the public sphere. And no one does it without being convinced that one has something to say that is relevant to the world around one.

 

That is why while most artists exhibit when they are young, there are others like Ganesh Pyne who may wait until they are middle aged. In fact, whenever an artist decides to exhibit for the first time, it is only with the inner conviction of having achieved something one wishes to share with the world.

 

Laila Khan Rajpal's first exhibition is a statement of exactly this sort: if at first glance her works appear to be full of unharmonized elements, soon enough one realizes that she is searching for new aesthetic equations. She rejects all forms of two-dimensional rectangular art. She seems to challenge the belief in an eternal order of any sort. The frames of her work seem to wither away and fall off in parts, sprouting shards of unevenly crafted glass that seems to be quivering along the edges. 

 

There is a striking waywardness in her work. Swathes of red, green or yellow oil tear across areas of ochre, siena, burnt umber and sand reliefs, just as carefully drawn figures float in areas of formlessness. They challenge our understanding of what art should be in a manner one seldom comes across in an art world that limits itself to conventional and decorative elements that fit in easily with the iron laws of commodity transfers and market fashions. This work dares you to understand it.

 

And as one begins to explore her works with understanding it poses many more questions for one who does so than it does for one who does not. For example, what do the grottoes and deserts with recognizable ruins of Petra, Palmyra or Persepolis among them, enclosing half-visible women who gaze out of these have to say to one? Who are these men, bearing the burden of roofs like classical Greek pillars? And what do they mean to these ghostly women who look past their well-crafted places in eternity with the ephemeral quality of shadows, mists and smoke?

 

The problem becomes even more complex when one sees her works in relation to other artists like Gerti Bierenbroodspot of the Netherlands, who has influenced her visual language in this exhibition. One realises that there is a dimension of recall in the work that seems to be saying: Look everything returns, even the signs on the wall! But then we are reminded that Laila has not visited these ancient desert cities, the ruins are only signposts for the real drama being played our on her canvases. The return, if any, is only conceptual. It is the living the artist is exorcising. She is not calling up spirits.

 

Her concern is the struggle between the ambition of human beings to pass into eternity through their creations and the inevitable process of birth, growth and death. Some, like the men in her canvases, appear to blind themselves to the inevitabilities in the quest for eternity and become living statues. Women, on the other hand, are a real if ephemeral presence trapped in the world the men have made.

 

Indeed, a rose she has painted in one of her recent works, eminently reflects the fragility, fragrance and persevering reality of these women who constantly reproduce the human race. So the ephemeral on the canvas becomes the real and the images of ruins merely dreams. Life emerges as victorious, but as a part of nature. Our ambitions are merely dreams that sometimes materialize and sometimes do not. The artist does not want us, however, to come to this conclusion easily. She weaves a complex web of myths and journeys through time to bring us to reality ultimately. The journey is difficult but rewarding in the end as all journeys ought to be.

 

Suneet Chopra

Art Critic, Writer