George Kuruvilla is an unconventional artist from Chennai. He does not hail from any prestigious art academy nor has he been trained by any prominent artist. George began his tryst in the arts as a businessman looking for a means of escape from his everyday dealings. Armed with a digital camera, George captured scenes of villagers, market places, Sadhus, Monks, rural settings and people, and paid special attention to the composition of each photograph he took. His passion for colour was revealed as he digitally manipulated the hues, tones and backgrounds of the photographs he had taken, which he later past on to hoard painters to translate onto canvas. Once this work was done, George further manipulated the canvas by painting and writing over it in graffiti. His graffiti sometimes encompassed part of a song or poem, sometimes it was just one word repeated across the canvas, but the graffiti often extended to the back of the canvas, where George completed his message. His works have an undeniably photographic, realistic, quality to them. His most recent series of works has seen his subjects step off the canvas and onto our stage at large, in the form of fiber-glass mannequins of Indian hijras, eerily life-like in form and painted in bold, rich hues with George's signature graffiti.
~ NJS |
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