Between, Beyond and Becoming: Men in Black and White (Revisiting Art History)

 

Wild Magic

 

At the end of viewing all the exhibits in Beyond Black and White (Season-II) at Icon, Art Gallery, Hyderabad, entered into world of Rajesh Nagulakonda’s exhibits. Suddenly a feel of traversing in a fantasy world echoes in the soul, rendering a mythical story of the wild.

While traveling in deep forest, often we got lost. And there’s a story beneath that. One if crosses the Tippa Teega (Menispermacea creeper) unknowingly, they will be lost and roaming around the same track.  It happened in Beyond Black and White show. It getting tough for me to exit from the show. Became a part of it. Reason might be spent much of my time and space in the wild. And getting accustomed to live in that fashion.

At if I exit from there will become part of the Anthropocene. Anthropocene human ('anthropo') and new ('cene’). A geological epoch. Truly it’s not true. In these times of Great Acceleration. Nature, natural are Myth. We are living in a concrete jungle with virtual realities. oh! no, not living, surviving.

Thanks To Rajesh Nagulakonda magic wand has commuted us from there to our green abode in a mythical memory -magical flying carpet. Rather than in auto machine.

Still cherishing the show. and that’s the spirit made to expressing the escapades’  of Beyond Black and white (Season—II).

 

 

Rajesh Nagulakonda: Artician

Being an Illustrator for comic books, animation. He has the kinetic energy with magical realism in his works. From Black and White to Beyond Black and White his narration moved his form from Indian mythology to Greek. For comic illustrators their tools are magic wands. Magicians usually make virtuality as reality. Comic illustrators make that factual with their works. So, Rajesh Nagulakonda is an Artician.

His form has intricate; fluid line rooted in Indian graphic storytelling and classical motifs. contours move with a natural rhythm as a bond of designed draftsmanship with organic expressionism.

His style of illustrative surrealism, blending classic graphic novel aesthetics with innate sensibilities. Clear outlines, complex internal patterns, and symbolic forms compose as contemplative mythical, Mythological imagery.

The works carry stout graphic balance between space alongside in textured motifs. The dynamic vertical formats make an image in viewer’s eye with a sense of movement, depth, and spatial height. Like listening to the Mythologies.

The colour with monochromatic base of rich blacks, subtle greys, and stark whites. Punctuating black-and-white spaces, vibrant, selective snaps of colour.  Intense reds, blues, or oranges. Create a key symbolic and narrative elements.  This is signature stroke of Rajesh which makes the viewer as listener of folk stories, rendering from their inner zones.

 Rajesh transition from illustrator to fine artist is an evolution from story-driven commercial artwork. With mythic graphic novels and illustrations for Campfire and Chandamama, standalone gallery art. Over time he  moved into vivid forms like print and digital media, physical art forms.

This is the secret behind his magic and width. The passages from virtual to real.

 

 

Enchanting thresholds 

  Rajesh Nagulakonda illustrative narratives have a striking mythological scene.  depicting a centaur warrior with a long spear set alongside a horned stag. These are conjuring themes of ancient legend, nature, and balance. Rendered in a vertical format. composition juxtaposes intricate line work with decorative geometric background panels. Through delicate line patterns and dense, stippled dark shading along the top and bottom edges. The exhibit relies on a high-contrast monochromatic black and white. Bright yellow is a luminous halo making a central focal point overdue the figures.

 

 

Golden Gait

 A world where boundary between myth and reality is fluid. A female centaur breaks free from the shadows of a fading, stagnant realm into light and liberation. Leaping ahead the movement shatters the rigid structure of past, casting off old symbols into floating fragments. Vibrant orange symbolizes rekindled life force, resilience, and individuality. courageous transition toward self-discovery and absolute freedom.

 The genre of the paintings is mythological illustrative surrealism. Magical realism. capturing an ethereal leap between movement, freedom, and transformation. Accomplished in a landscape orientation. Composition pays a diagonal division, with a dark, heavily stippled shadow realm on the left gives way to vast open space as the figure leaps forward. Trailing patterned grey tiles and floating square fragments in wake. Form demonstrates line precision, blending fine cross-hatching across the creature's lower body, flowing, rhythmic ink work in her hair and background panels. 

 

 Never ending story…

 Mythological, folk stories have neither end nor beginning. They continue to persist through time and space.

 Rajesh has striking parallel lines with James Jean and Amruta Patil For successfully spanning comic narrative illustration and mythic fine art. James Jean transitioned from award-winning comic cover illustration into high-art galleries, bringing his fluid line precision, dynamic surrealism. Amruta Patil (Adi Parva) and Appupen transitioned from graphic novels into gallery exhibitions, utilizing stark high-contrast ink work, mythological motifs, and graphic compositions to evolve sequential storytelling into standalone, contemplative fine art.

Rajesh Nagulakonda strives in similar thresholds. They are illustrious treasure hunters of Art and Mythological stories. They are Genie of the Lamp. Very happy, fun-loving, and is rarely seen without a big smile on face. Making others happy with their illustrative journeys. One should often join them in Between, Beyond and becoming Black and White for listening to the Bed time stories.

Between, Beyond and Becoming: Men in Black and White (Revisiting Art History)

 

Between, Beyond and Becoming: Men in Black and White

(Revisiting Art History)

 

Performing Lines

 

Sreenivasaram Makeenidi: Artiteer (Artist + Puppeteer)

 

Traditional shadow puppet theater (Tholu Bommalata) is an ongoing, living oral tradition passed down through generations. It is sustained by A. Chalapathi Rao, Sindhe Sriramulu, Kanday Anjanappa, and Dalavai Kullayappa. who progressed classical leather puppets into fine art canvases, lamps, and decor. M.F. Husain and K.G. Subramanyan drew deeply on the art form's bold contours, side-profiles, and flat storytelling. Globally, researchers including Giuseppina Volpicelli and Dr. Serena Autiero documented and archived the tradition. while its ancient links connect directly to Southeast Asian Wayang Kulit shadow puppetry.

Enduring this lineage of visual adaptation, Sreenivasaram Makeenidi reimagines Tholu Bommalata in Beyond Black and White (Season-II). Interpreting its kinetic energy, framed light-box aesthetics, and iconic shadow silhouettes into a modern fine art dialogue.

His companions Sivaji, Raju, Moshe, Shankar, Rajesh have drawn the intricacies of Livingness with Bull, Goat, calves, birds, forgotten temples and lanes. They have captured the form of hat living, whereas Sreenivasaram is placing the soul to through embedding soul to that.

Tholu Bommalata puppets are crafted primarily from goat and sheep skin, chosen for their durability, flexibility, and translucent quality when dyed. Historically, deer hide was reserved for revered deities due to its strength, while thicker buffalo hide formed heavy demon figures.  For iconic luminosity, raw hides are un-tanned, shaved thin, and dried until translucent. Artisans then punch intricate perforations into the leather and apply bold colors—allowing light to illuminate glowing, intricate shadows on screen.

 

Sreenivasaram Makineedi made efforts to place all this skill and craftsmanship in his works. Like a puppeteer directs movement, shadow, and drama behind a backlit screen, an Artiteer orchestrates those same theatrical elements directly on the canvas. he isn't just painting a static subject.  In true sense puppeteering through form, colour, line-work, with inverted movement recreated performance inside a fine art medium.

The show Begins…

Traditional shadow puppet theater (Tholu Bommalata) is an ongoing, living oral tradition carried through generations. So, their stories continue to be retold, re-enacted, and reimagined.  Through stacked registers, inverted animals, and dynamic motion like horses galloping in differing directions, the ruler pointing forward with this visual depiction the composition unfolds sequence of a live performance rather than a static moment.  A traditional folk form emerging into contemporary line. The framing of the painting with adapting their visual grammar from leather puppets on a lit screen to textured canvas paintings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Matrix Revisited

 

 

 The drawing titled Ancient Matrix’ is revisiting matrix. In art a matrix connotes to the physical surface, object, or structural grid from which an artwork is established, generated, or organized. In Tholu Bommalata, the treated, perforated leather puppet is a matrix. Sreenivasaram Makineedi further deconstructs Tholu Bommalata into a minimalist structural architecture. Here, the vibrant colour fills recede, leaving delicate geometric line-work, pin-point node perforations, and strategic black-and-red block accents that evoke the internal skeleton and light-perforations of leather shadow puppets. By framing opposing horses and central figures within a grid-like matrix, Makineedi captures the essence of puppets held in suspended performance—bridging raw shadow-puppet geometry with contemporary abstract minimalism

Here matrix is the visible black grid line-work with figures, node points, and colour blocks in suspension. Its impersonators both structural and functional.

 

Curtain closure…

The physical construction and visual treatment of these paintings reveal a highly deliberate conceptual approach, translating an ancient performance tradition into modern visual art. The textured, raised, and colour embossed framing creates a physical depth that replicates the light-box or stretched cotton cloth screen (Tirai) of traditional Tholu Bommalata shows. Instead of depicting figures on a flat background, the painted canvas itself acts as the illuminated medium, framing the narrative within a theatrical enclosure.

 The Kinetic Motion & Performance Aesthetics translates a theatrical movement into a 2D space through specific compositional strategies.

Exaggerated pointing arms, wide-eyed profile views, and extended animal strides freeze dynamic performance beats, creating a sense of continuous storytelling across time and space. The colour palette dominated by stark crimson red, deep black, and textured off-white. Create impression of the traditional vegetable dyes the contrast creates an illusion of backlighting, making the red zones glow against the heavy black outlines. Heavy texture and crackle effects on the background to evoke the raw, dried, and worked texture of translucent leather hide (Tholu), blurring the line between a traditional functional puppet and a fine art canvas painting. And it’s the final signature or curtain closure of the show.

 

 

Between, Beyond and Becoming: Men in Black and White (Revisiting Art History)

 

Shankar Pamarthy: Artoralist

 

 

The transition of Shankar Pamarthy is a journey from one meadow of Art to another — from cartoonist to artist. He transformed caricatures into portraitures. And became a Portraitureist. Because he exaggerates a prominent feature of a person to capture the soul of the person. His ism is Contemporary Post-Cartoon Drawing, with an amalgamation of Cubosurrealism and Graphic Realism. They are profoundly visible in his works on Gandhi, Mandela, and political leaders — exhibiting humour and identification. Fragmentation is the mark of Shankar. Shattered into geometry, like reflections in broken glass. His perception is viewing through a kaleidoscope. K. Laxman’s common man is a symbol of humour with sharp observation and common wisdom. N. K. Ranga’s line drawing of Gandhi merged with the map of India. Earlier pioneer cartoonist Shankar drew Gandhi with simple and few lines, depicting the greatness of that man and his simplicity. So was the figure. The greatest advantage of the caricaturists and illustrators who worked and are working in newsprint media is their hold over Black colour. Expressing everything in black and white. They knew the power of the Black hole — the mysteries of mundane life and the politics behind it, which are much studied but not fully understood. So, the line of these persons has huge concentrations of matter packed in very tiny spaces. No gravity beneath their lines — surface can escape. Might be an event, horizon, person, community, group, society. Their line has the capturing light. From Lakshman’s Rekha to Shankar Pamarthy, it is a boundary that engulfs all matter and exhibits it to the world. For them, a person, a crowd, will be a character. And so, Shankar moved from crowd capturing to a herd of goats. If a pastoralist moves in green pastures, Shankar moved from human watching to goat watching — and drawing, painting them through his length and line. From caricaturist to Portraitureist, and now Artoralist. With the draw of his pen stroke, everyone joins the herd. Let’s follow…

 

 

Herd Line

Shankar mentions his caricatures have a “cubic and geometric structure” that emerged from painting signboards — to fit an entire content in a 2x2 feet space. His Gandhi drawings with 0.1mm and 0.005mm pens for fine detailing, with thoughtful alterations making the figure larger than life. And the same pattern perpetuates in the goat. Stick-like legs, tapering bodies, premeditated disproportion for capturing speed and spirit. Goats are not pinched round. Elusively fitted into cubes, triangles, sharp intersecting planes. Horn, ear, leg, rib. Texted on a board. Each face in the herd is distinct.

 

 

Bubble

Each animal has its own space. And those are termed as Bubble. The personal space or flight bubble of the stock. It surrounds every group of animals like an imaginary force field. Each group of animals may have a different size bubble depending on their nature. If they are jumpy, it may be a big, sensitive bubble. Goats have copious Bubble. Their horizons are much wider. Not static, much moving. The goats in the small frame precipitate his caricature method. Goat resting, one head in profile, one in jump. Same face, many angles, till the soul appears. These are not European pastoral sheep. Deccani, Black Bengal goat of his childhood in Nalgonda. Lean, dry-land, scrub-eating, road-crossing. They are not cute, wiry, angular, assembled to survive on waste routes. Fragmented goat’s anatomy, disperses it, yet carries precise characteristic features. The eye, horn curve, ear maintaining their own distinction, composed as total form. Critics describe his colour.  He is a pencil and piper, followed and following the herd in their horizons.

 

Contour

A cartoonist perceives in strips. A pastoralist in movement. Shankar amalgamates both. A horizontal strip in a newspaper. filled with a flight.  Once it was a path White as newsprint with Black line in ink. Now Shankar is a Artographer, from still figures to crusader as Arts man in the meadows of Art. His piercing gaze is a horizontal line drawing us into those.