Artist Simran KS Lamba in his paintings uses the rare medium, tar, to metaphorically throw light on the complexities of life and articulate its various expressions, says Uma Nair
When a script writer for documentary films decides to step into the world of art and paintings, you can be sure there will be something to savour. Well, Simran KS Lamba, an artist who unveiled a small suite of works at Triveni Art Gallery in March, is one such. His works have been made with mixed media and a rare one called tar. According to Simran, “‘Mixed media art’, as a term, has been exhaustively used to describe a variety of works in the current day and age with the alignment of any two separate media on the same base. Often it is due to the careful examination of the oeuvre of most such practitioners over decades that throws light on the complexities of their vision and articulates their expression.”
Industrial and waste elements
It is the expression of these latent complexities, the multi-faceted use of a singular media plane to bind cogent concepts and the creation of an inherent intangible sense of wonder that separates the highly feted serious practitioners from the chaff.
Simran’s oeuvre, spanning over a decade and a half, with his primary medium, tar, and its lucid execution in this study of form and figures, brings to fore industrial elements and waste material. These are being given a second lease of life to highlight veritable figurative formations hiding behind dense layers of alternative media such as encaustic wax and jute and are highlighted through his chosen mode of expression — tar — in paintings such Autumn Evening.
In its full splendour radiance, this is a painting that is both reflective as well as rivetting for the resonance that it has with the viewer. It speaks of seasons, time and the truth that it is the balance of nature and an inner harmony that we seek to strive that keeps us in the scheme of things. The elements of man and dog in miniature format create an incandescent echo of truth, beauty and love. To look at Autumn Evening is to know that a tree is a sanctuary, and a harbinger of serenity and solace as much as it is about shelter and service to the world through all seasons and times.
Form and fragmentation
In this study of form and fragmentation through tar, in paintings such as Burnt Innards and Thread Bare, Simran highlights the depiction of form as fractured, and in isolation, with either a singular figure or couples emanating from the canvasses in fragments. Each fragment represents the whole figure in terms of placement and structure, and yet is dissonant in its being. Space is allocated around each single piece of burnt digital print paper (encased in encaustic wax and tar) to remind the viewer of its inherent isolation. Eventually, all the pieces come together to create an exposition of multi-layered formations of isolated figures and couples.
In his paintings such as The Reach, Simran creates exaggerated visages of human beings with the simultaneous application of tar residue and heat with fluidic water impressions to form the subject’s primary visages. With impressions of human palms and forearms being cast in tar and copper dust, a complex interweaving of literal and thematic motifs has been done. It signifies the metaphorical ‘reach’ of their inner souls as it wafts towards the top of the dry pastel smeared canvas. It is being deliberately made to emanate from the subjects’ heads reaching skywards.
Coal tar deciphering
Coal tar over a canvas is fascinating. It becomes the source for the completion of the objective because Simran couldn’t have envisioned what that would be like without the ideation of colour tones that could be adjacent to black. He couldn’t have painted from looking at a reflective, shiny screen. He needed to see the scale of his sensibilities. It was as if he had to witness a blocking of already-painted imagery alongside its coal tar — or altered deciphering.
Painting for Simran is a rediscovering experience as it goes beyond the mere act of painting. It’s a process that accumulates and builds up into a momentum that must reach a crescendo of cohesive cadences. Painting then becomes for him more about using such devices and details that are incorporated into a personal aesthetic environment. He could not have envisioned paintings and environments without the materiality of his elements and that is why in practice and in his own sensitivity, he stands alone and apart.
