‘Birds, Butterflies and Henry Moore’, engages an inspiring mystery across architectural space to capture the freedom of a spirited butterfly or the contemplative brooding bird as a mere observer. The bird as Nature is a constant observer figure in these series. The bird runs through time all the way from the present modern- world to the age of the Upanishact as the mythic – observer- the seer, the soul and witness of time. At the same time there is also the ‘alter’ motif of the Butterfly as the Karma- ego, the ephemerality in history. The tension between time and space is thus allegorized by Gossain through these two figures.

For Gossain- abstraction was always a vocabulary he instantly could relate to, from the mathematical abstractions of a scientific educational background to the similarly yet somewhat opposed intuitive reverberations of the creative mind. The rendition of his creative expressions on a clean white canvas that eventually evolves into a different time- space through his brush-work is what he sees as the material analogue of the infinitely nuanced, spontaneous, yet necessarily meaningful circuits of his ‘mind-fietd’. The idea of his canvases is to explore the boundaries, tensions which lie between consciousness and what transcends it.

Moore’s abstract-figurative style becomes more than a mere template for Gossain as he modulates further derivatives of it. Form therefore becomes central to his works due to which his canvases are designed on a large scale, enabling each nascent form and idea to develop effectively into its potential other meanings. Each of the work reveals a powerful tension between the fullness and luminosity of color and a stillness of form, and control over the object. In various compositions the bird is stoically perched and the calmness and strength of this balance is complimented by a certain fluidity of the background which begins with textural brush strokes and then fades into softer shades. In ‘Butterflies and Henry Moore’, the viewer is again confronted with this intense force between the static and the kinetic energy of the composition. While the butterfly is exquisitely free floating, the geometrical form in the centre defies its boundaries, as it were, and flows into other fluid shapes. It is precisely this exquisite treatment of balance in space and color that lends Gossain’s works an irresistible vitality that can seldom fail to draw the viewer into a deep reflective mode.

VENUE: Alliance Francis,
72, Lodhi Estate, New Delhi- 110003

DATE: 12th to 20th  August 2012

Ravi Gossain, Birds & Spaces, Oil on Canvas, 60×60 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Birds & Spaces, Oil on Canvas, 60×80 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Blue Bird, Oil on Canvas, 60×100 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Butterflies & Henry Moore, Oil on Canvas, 7×16 feet

Ravi Gossain, Butterflies & Henry Moore, Oil on Canvas, 55×65 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Butterflies & Henry Moore, Oil on Canvas, 66×80 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Composition, Oil on Canvas, 50×50 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Composition, Oil on Canvas, 60 x 60 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Composition, Oil on Canvas, 60 x60 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Composition, Oil on Canvas, 60×50 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Composition, Oil on Canvas, 60×60 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Composition, Oil on Canvas, 60×100 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Composition, Oil on Canvas, 80×94 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Space Station Butterflies, Oil on Canvas, 66×80 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Strech of Time, Oil on Canvas, 60×80 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Strech of Time, Oil on Canvas, 60×80 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Sunflower & Henry Moore, Oil on Canvas, 80×90 Inches

Ravi Gossain, The Bodh Tree, Oil on Canvas, 60×72 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Untitled, Oil on Canvas, 80×80 Inches

Ravi Gossain, Untitled, Oil on Canvas, 80×90 Inches