Report by Santanu Ganguly: Johny M L describes, Vikash Kalra paints with passion and his passion is driven by a vision; a vision perhaps realized through life experiences. He has two ideals in his creative life- Pablo Picasso and Francis Newton Souza.
To understand Kalra’s works one has to have an idea about this artist’s life before he decided to become an artist around ten years back. Born to a middle class family in Delhi, Kalra was not a child prodigy. He never drew anything or never attempted painting his notebooks with the cheap color pencils that a child generally gets during the growing up years. Not being an exceptionally gifted student, Kalra scraped through his academic studies and obtained a degree in Commerce from the Delhi University. His father’s untimely death had destabilized the financial prospectus of his family. That was one reason why he got involved in the distribution of newspapers. Not a grand job to do or a grand profession to boast off, distributing newspapers was a ‘shadow job’ for him or to be precise, a job done by shadow people. Kalra did this successfully along with his brothers and gained access to various business houses that wanted to distribute their pamphlets along with the dailies. This was not only an additional income for Kalra but also a way of developing his networks, which he did not know when he would put to use.
Kalra, as a newspaper boy was not planning to spend the rest of his life in a shadow profession. He got into second hand car business which brought him enough money. He travelled all over the country as part of procuring and delivering second hand cars. Soon he grew tired of it and set up a restaurant in Delhi with his brothers as partners. Success as a restaurant owner was not helping him much as something else was happening in/to him. Kalra sold his restaurant to someone else and moved on. In between he put his fingers into property dealing. During all those years he kept on recognizing the fact that each successful moment was supposed to be followed by a moment of failure. He saw money coming in bundles and disappearing without leaving a trace and rendering him a pauper in a few months’ time. Providence was such that Kalra found himself once again sitting with newspapers and magazines in a booth in a busy South Delhi market. He had bought an unsuccessful second hand bookshop with pavement rights from a failed businessman. Sitting amongst stacks of second hand books, newspapers and magazines, Kalra entered into a new realm of life; a life of knowledge. Idle hours spent amongst books. Kalra became one of the top procurers of second hand books from publishing companies all over the world as he started receiving a stream of patrons who were placing orders for different kinds of books.
Art would have been a remote thing for Kalra had it not been his chance encounter with a second hand book on Picasso at his pavement bookstall. Restless and confused, he flipped through the works and something got burst in his mind; certain floodgates were opened. Like someone possessed by a spirit, Kalra started drawing on the magazines that he was supposed to sell. His attention turned from selling books to drawing on those books and magazines. Nights and days passed in drawing and within a week’s time Kalra had covered around three thousand pages with his drawings. In his typical style he sold off his thriving second hand book business to some other person and walked off to a world which he was absolutely new. And he did not know that that world was much harsher and competitive than the worlds that he had got involved himself, right from paper distribution to second hand car selling, from restaurant to second hand book selling. It was time for him to deal with something very fresh and he did not know how to go about it.
From his feverish and fervent studies of Picasso, as by that time he understood his expressions matched very well with that of Picasso at least stylistically and formally or later with Francis Newton Souza, he understood that he needed a studio; that was how artists operated, he found out. Kalra, unlike other artist in town, was financially stable and he had a couple of flats at his disposal to convert into an art studio. Thus Kalra’s journey as an artist began. He equipped himself with studies which he had missed when he was really a student in school and college. Each juncture of his creative career was ridden with problems as he could not find enough patrons to support him. But his experience as a businessman came handy whenever he found a problem. And he had a few shows in the meanwhile. But when he put up his first solo show, critics came forward to condemn him as a Picasso or Souza impersonator. Any artist, at the face of such severe criticism could have dropped the stylistic affinities with those masters then and there. But Kalra stuck to his guns/brushes. Even today he believes that he is a self-taught artist and whenever he paints he does not paint to create a Picasso or Souza but a Kalra himself.
Date & Time: Upto April 30, 2013; 11 am–7 pm
Venue: Art konsult, Lado Sarai, New Delhi
To understand Kalra’s works one has to have an idea about this artist’s life before he decided to become an artist around ten years back. Born to a middle class family in Delhi, Kalra was not a child prodigy. He never drew anything or never attempted painting his notebooks with the cheap color pencils that a child generally gets during the growing up years. Not being an exceptionally gifted student, Kalra scraped through his academic studies and obtained a degree in Commerce from the Delhi University. His father’s untimely death had destabilized the financial prospectus of his family. That was one reason why he got involved in the distribution of newspapers. Not a grand job to do or a grand profession to boast off, distributing newspapers was a ‘shadow job’ for him or to be precise, a job done by shadow people. Kalra did this successfully along with his brothers and gained access to various business houses that wanted to distribute their pamphlets along with the dailies. This was not only an additional income for Kalra but also a way of developing his networks, which he did not know when he would put to use.
 |
| Vikash Kalra’s ‘Angels of History’ |
Art would have been a remote thing for Kalra had it not been his chance encounter with a second hand book on Picasso at his pavement bookstall. Restless and confused, he flipped through the works and something got burst in his mind; certain floodgates were opened. Like someone possessed by a spirit, Kalra started drawing on the magazines that he was supposed to sell. His attention turned from selling books to drawing on those books and magazines. Nights and days passed in drawing and within a week’s time Kalra had covered around three thousand pages with his drawings. In his typical style he sold off his thriving second hand book business to some other person and walked off to a world which he was absolutely new. And he did not know that that world was much harsher and competitive than the worlds that he had got involved himself, right from paper distribution to second hand car selling, from restaurant to second hand book selling. It was time for him to deal with something very fresh and he did not know how to go about it.
From his feverish and fervent studies of Picasso, as by that time he understood his expressions matched very well with that of Picasso at least stylistically and formally or later with Francis Newton Souza, he understood that he needed a studio; that was how artists operated, he found out. Kalra, unlike other artist in town, was financially stable and he had a couple of flats at his disposal to convert into an art studio. Thus Kalra’s journey as an artist began. He equipped himself with studies which he had missed when he was really a student in school and college. Each juncture of his creative career was ridden with problems as he could not find enough patrons to support him. But his experience as a businessman came handy whenever he found a problem. And he had a few shows in the meanwhile. But when he put up his first solo show, critics came forward to condemn him as a Picasso or Souza impersonator. Any artist, at the face of such severe criticism could have dropped the stylistic affinities with those masters then and there. But Kalra stuck to his guns/brushes. Even today he believes that he is a self-taught artist and whenever he paints he does not paint to create a Picasso or Souza but a Kalra himself.
Date & Time: Upto April 30, 2013; 11 am–7 pm
Venue: Art konsult, Lado Sarai, New Delhi
0 comments:
Post a Comment