Wednesday, February 15, 2006

THE SPEAKING TREE

Savi’s art has more to do with excavation than representation. The photographer in him does not as much focuses, crops out or narrows down as scoops out. By disinterring the human images buried in the trees, he reinstates the human in nature. His effort to search for the parallels of human patterns in the texture of trees is much like that of scientist who watches a drama of pulsating organisms in what appears a mere blob of blood to the naked eye.
In these photographs, Savi frames out bends, stems and crevices of trees to compose metaphors of human desire. Through the filter of his amazing inventiveness, human figures in trees emerge like sculptures out of stone. Not coincidentally, his compositions indicate an atavistic urge towards the erotic art of Khajuraho.
After his view-finder excavates what can be termed as `the unconscious of the trees, the painter in him imbues it with interpretation, imposing the frames with emphatic hues in primary tones of blood red, green, indigo and yellow. His digital art helps him put a surreal skin on the frames and animate the figures so that they can best be described as digital sculptures.
In Savi;s photographs, one can locate an uncanny echo of the miniature art of the 17th and 19th century, especially the Kangra one. Trees served as important props in the drama of Radha-Krishna love in these miniatures. To heighten the Sringar rasa, the artist would show two trunks of a tree coiled around each other. Savi zooms in on this stylization of miniatures to recuperate a range of emotive themes.
In this series, he not only attempts to shift the co-ordinates of his expression but also yearns to re-configure the genre of photography.

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