It is also here that the sketches, etchings and lithographs of Surendran Nair reveal, in his own words, the beginnings of his "artistic vocabulary". Early sketches by the artist—from random scenes in ramshackle hostel rooms to portraits of his peer group including the other four and Anita Dube—tell of the lives and friendships they shared. These early drawings and prints build the vocabulary of ideas that Nair would later employ in various forms. The big hero in Nair's text-visual paintings is humour, a critical tool according to the artist. "Humour helps you [gain] distance from your subject. Humour has so many levels… satire, irony, nonsense, all have their distinct utility," he says. Nair's use of humour would greatly feature in later works like his Labyrinth of Eternal Delight—a series of 26 etchings. These visual commentaries are simultaneously Nair's playful odes to his heroes (there are monuments to Duchamp, Gandhi and Aristophanes) as well as his reflections on the absurd but lived realities of human existence. Monument for a Perpetual Pessimist shows a spherical-object with an open window. Only, it shows the night sky, perhaps as a comment on the very real futility of following hope: wherever you see an open window, you will see it's also dark. Another work titled For Those who Run too Fast shows a boot with a spike under it, and a snail under its heel. The symbolism could be read as Nair's critique of the capitalist value of 'speed' with all its victims. The most incisive of these is one titled The Mythology of Civilisation, showing a clock: the hands are designed to move and come right back to the same spot. The image is reflected under a different header, 'The Oracle of Delphi' . Had this been predicted? "The Labyrinth series is a critique of our times: a shift was marked in 1975. The Emergency unleashed these forces of religious and sectarian violence which were lying buried till then. Using humour, these works record the trauma within our history," says the artist.

KNMA gallery

Collector’s Conscience

Dialectical Materials