Life is full of illusions, which in turn keep its stark realities cloaked under their convincing garb,” muses Chennai-based mixed media artist Yuvan Bothysathuvar as he shows us around at his ongoing solo show ‘Shifting Paradigms: Learning From Life’ at Gallery Veda in Chennai.

The 40-year-old, who gave up pigments and the canvas for mixed media eight years ago, believes only an artist could break these illusions and remind humanity of life’s true nature through novel mediums of expression.

In his recent body of art, Yuvan marries Papier Colle with geometric abstraction and creates a unique visual rhetoric to depict the different faces of life.

“There is something magical about paper and the printed word. Rough or glossy, blazingly white or dirty, paper comes with a range of colours, tones and crisp. A blend of these elements gives my works an intriguing look,” he says.

Little black letters indeed speak out in ‘Ripple’, a 96”X96” work done on eight panels of plywood. Coiled over a backdrop of soiled printed paper is a huge ripple made of thinly cut magazine strips. It is not just the contrasting tones of both the papers that make the work eye-catchy but also appearances of smaller ripples that fuse with the troughs and crests of the bigger one.

“The ripple symbolises the disturbances that plague our life. One moment there is calm and then something, whether in the form of social, political or economical tumult pierces through our composure, just the way a pebble disturbs water,” summarises Yuvan.

Although pregnant with meaning, Yuvan’s works are evenly catchy and loaded with colours as the artist believes his priority is to make his work visually pleasant rather than preachy. “Even if your art depicts the true horrors of a war, what is the use when its goriness repels people,” he says.

A native of Tiruvannamalai, Yuvan begun his stint in art by painting portraits for a banner company in 1992.  Although he later moved to Chennai to pursue his graduation and post-graduation in Visual Communication from the Government College of Fine Arts, Chennai, it wasn’t until 2007 that he discovered a wider vista in mixed media.

A former researcher at Chennai’s Lalit Kala Akademi, Yuvan uses optical illusion as a symbol in his work ‘Grass Is Greener on the Other Side’, to show the difference between deception and reality. The work, comprising a twin set of square boards plastered with colourful strips of paper, looks like a spray of confetti from a distance, but appears to be alternate pairs of green and red squares when seen from the corners.

“The squares show how coloured our judgment would be if we do not see a thing from both the sides. The same faulty perception makes us envious towards others, even though nature has invested the same qualities in us,” Yuvan says.

The artist addresses the transiency of life in his work ‘Wall’ (90”X41”) which he has made by leaving hazy imprints of freshly painted posters on plywood board. “Even though the images are residue of the original painting, the reality is they have replaced the latter, just like one generation is subbed by another,” he explains.

Besides, paper which he procures from second hand book shops, the artist uses materials like threads, mirrors, jute, turmeric, beads, stainless steel and different types of stones to articulate his concepts.

Honoured with the ‘Emerging Artist of the Year’ award as Part of ‘Glenfiddich’ Artist in residence programme in Scotland, 2013, Yuvan recently won the CIMA Merit Award 2015 in Kolkata.

Currently improvising on his concepts for the Papier Colle Collection, Yuvan says giving them form is a daunting task. From sorting out the papers to manually cutting (or tearing) them into several dimensions to gluing them to shape takes him from three weeks to one-and-a-half months to achieve.

But the labour pays off eventually. “It does, not when people buy my works, but when they fall in love with them. To them I don’t have to explain my concepts because deep within I know they have found their own meanings and that’s what makes me happy,” he adds.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Magazine / by Samhat Mohapatra / August 29th, 2015