Ganesh Doddamani: March 2015

13 March 2015

' The Fabled Hampi '

Grand Essence of Hampi

Amidst an awesome boulder-strewn landscape along the banks of the Tungabhadra river, Hampi was one of the glittering showpieces of India's might in the 15th century. There were opulent palaces, marvellous temples, massive fortifications, baths, markets, pavilions and stables for royal elephants. The city's merchants traded in diamonds, pearls, fine silks, brocades, horses and much more. The austere, grandiose site of Hampi was the last capital of the last great Hindu Kingdom of Vijayanagar. Its fabulously rich princes built Dravidian temples and palaces which won the admiration of travellers between the 14th and 16th centuries. Conquered by the Deccan Muslim confederacy in 1565, the city was pillaged over a period of six months before being abandoned.

UNESCO world heritage site Hampi, once the flourishing capital of the Vijayanagar Empire is now one of the richest spectacular tourist spot in India. The endless ruins and heritage of this vast kingdom evoked interest in many artists from centuries. Artist Ganesh Doddamani is one among them and this obsession made him to create many paintings on the same. ” All of my paintings represent Hampi Temples, a place to frequent regularly because of its intricate carvings, its architecture and the play of light and shadow on the temples evoked a fascination in me” says Ganesh.

His pictorial imagination is fuelled by nostalgia. Instead of capturing the sad ruins, his intention is to explore the grandeurs of bygone Royal era. His goal is not to capture the picturesque essence through the photographic realism. Ganesh works in landscape, but his is not the landscape of the eye alone. It is also the landscape of the mind that hold his attention, populated not with physical presence of figures, but sign of their passage, more evocative because of the absence of protagonists. Though people are not seen in the scene, we can experience echoes of their whisper through the monuments. So each stone tells a different story of it’s own. Yes, His work is taken up with the exploration of the numinous in the forms of inanimate architectural forms.

He explores the potential of the profound in the playful, of the keening concealed in mirth. All done with a great degree of competence and verve, his matured compositions and handling of colors evoke an esthetic engagement with the works. His colors establish a range of moods, much as do different Ragas and the result is feast for the spectator’s eyes. He distorts perspective and presents it as both past and present. Consequently in the process of painting, sometimes he breaks down literal narrative, it yields to hidden language of color and form and apparent narrative achieves an ambiguity uncertainly. The USP of these works are playful, rich shadow and light with infused energy, whilst giving solidity to the objects, these achieve visual distance and depth as well. For the shadows, he uses a unique green color instead of black or blue, which is reminiscent of French Impressionists.

Yes, this is a sojourn in to the bygone era. Coinciding World Heritage Day, Ganesh’s befitting visual tribute to the splendor of Hampi.

CS Krishna Setty

Senior Artist and art critic

' The Fabled Hampi '

Solo Exhibition @ Art Spice Art Gallery

The Metropolitan Hotel & Spa,Bangla Sahib Road,New Delhi -110001 - India

www.artspicegallery.com

Hampi-101 Tittle: Hampi Story in Stone

Hampi-103 Tittle:Musical pillars of Vittala temple with musicians.

Hampi-102- Tittle: Priest at the Virupaksha temple

Hampi-91 Tittle:Way to Vitthala Temple

Hampi-99 Tittle:Morning light on the Pillars with Dove

Hampi-100 Tittle:A golden glory, slowly re-surrected

Hampi-98 Tittle:Morning Light at the Vitthala Temple

Hampi-97- Tittle:Priest at the Virupaksha temple (Prayer time)

Hampi-96 Tittle:The light in Paataleshwara

Hampi-88 Tittle:A Tombstone of an Exemplary Kingdom”

Hampi-85 Tittle:Stone Chariot

Hampi 81 Tittle:The treasurehouse of valuable ancient ruins

Hampi 62 Tittle: Hunamanji

Who it happen?

Rain is one of the most beautiful gifts bestowed on us by nature. Almost everyone love the rainy season, especially the first rain of the summer season. The sight of raindrops falling after a long summer is truly beautiful, and the only thing more beautiful is the ‘smell’ of that rain when it first hits the ground. Yes, the smell that makes us poetic and romantic seems to come from rain striking fresh soil. Many are familiar with this smell, but why does that particular rain smell so wonderful? Water itself does not have any smell, so what’s the secret behind this beautiful smell? This made me to think and work on it . From past 4 years i am working on it. I've been painting from 19 years so I certainly understand color and the application of oil paint better, but I hope I haven't evolved too much beyond that.

My vibrantly colored canvases are abstract, and any relationship to landscape has to be sought out by looking deeply. I want to have a narrow, limited footprint to tell people, This is how I see the world, and I'm going to make you see it that way for a while.” Allude to Landscape in formalistic ways, while filling the canvas with wild colors in combinations never seen in nature, The composition is usually in horizontal bands loosely suggesting earth and sky. The high horizon keeps everything earth and below.” Reaching tendril like through these broad zones of color are what I calls “vertical signifiers” - not trees, but maybe the sense of rhythm. That's how i like to paint, with darks and light, bands that create a sense of rhythm. You feel that you’re in apace that is familiar and also unfamiliar. For all their abstract freedom, these paintings are closely bound to a sense of place, a material reality that is very familiar to the artist. I have been living and working in Bangalore from past 11 years, but my impulse to paint grew naturally out of my childhood. I was painting before I even know what a painting was. In my landscape concept, the very materials the painting is made of tie it back to the land, since paint is essentially made from earth, from minerals.

The physicality of his chosen medium, oil on canvas, is very important to me. The delights in pointing out that ‘a painting is liquefied fat mixed with ground - up rocks and smeared on a flat surface. “Not surprisingly, my studio is hard-core messy, with just about every surface encrusted in truly geologic layers of dried paints. I like a certain amount of clumsiness in the process.

”Painting suits my desire to be clumsy, to make a mess. Play is most important. In order to paint, The texture of the paint drippings in the studio is reminiscent of the dense coagulation of paint at the bottom of many of my canvases, which i says is there to create an earthy feel in the four ground. I want the bottom to relate to my feet, the middle to relate to my guts, and the top to relate to my head, like you're standing in a place with a discernible foreground, middle ground, and background.