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

 

Mist of Tranquillity: Sivaji Tallavajhula

 

 

 

Beyond Black and White (Season II) speaks in multiple languages, like a large language model. With deep artistic networks. Beginning with the narratives of Sivaji Tallavajhula.

 

 Sivaji Tallavajhula with a white beard, quiet eyes, and a calm that matches his paintings. Like another work of his own displayed. still, listening and unhurried. His language is deceptively simple. Few planes, a thin wash, a single line, a single touch of red.  He loves wandering in nature and carries those memories. Later those memories unveil as form and shades of Ecosophy. Animals and humans who are not posed, but paused, caught in a moment of trust, of listening, of prayer.

 

The Calf - Innocence as Form

The painting of the calf is Innocence as Form. A calf with head lowered, body abridged to two massive soft planes. In greys and olive, with a single red ladybug in the corner.  it turns the normal into pure form. The lowered head is not submission. It is trust and innocent love. Sivaji seldom portrays aggression, but confined power. With stillness and grace, with color in greys and olive, and life with a single red ladybug. The unique composition in this painting is a crow sitting on the calf. Ecologically, this is termed as Bio-commanalism. This picture is usually visible while the cattle are at pasture. 

 

A cattle egret sitting on the back of the cattle. If there is any disturbance, the egret flies away, cautioning the cattle. Usually in the pastures, the egrets are found sitting on the back of the buffaloes. It is on black with white and yellow ochre. Here Sivaji has reimagined it with white with black. In this particular painting, the head is small and angular, the ears are flat geometric shapes, the eye is a single sharp white slash. Nothing is decorative. Everything is vital. At the bottom right, a tiny bright red ladybug sits alone. The only warm, living punctuation in a world of grey. The style denotes contemporary Indian abstract-figurative, with roots in Cubism and minimalism. Form portrays the calf assembling us feel as if it is in our hands. Soft, still, open, innocent. Forms are flat, interlocking planes, like folded paper shared with us.  Thin layered wash, edges soft and breathing. The surface displays its own texture, making the work like a drawing. Genuity in paint is the text. It is the signature technique of Sivaji. A knowingly controlled palette of greys, slate blue, black and olive green. The restraint is the point. Against that silence, the red ladybug becomes a spark of life, like humor and hope, colours the eyes of the viewer.  Silently, the painting symbolises the calf as innocent love, nourishment, and calmness. Sivaji does not paint divinity with ornament. He paints it with stillness. The lowered head is not submission, it is trust. The huge body suggests protection and earth. The ladybug, small and easily missed.   Divinity in the minuscule. Though existing in the niche of mundane life, but overlooked.  

 

The Drummer - Pensive Music

The most poetic work of the series. A woman in profile with closed eyes, holding a round drum to her chest. Behind her head, a glowing red sun, like the echoing music of the drum. A tiny bird sitting on the edge of the drum, a humming listener. The drum is transiting time, the dawn. The bird is the tweeting soul. The woman in black is the depth of the rhythm. Grey is a tranquil sound, white is the aroma of silence, red is the passionate self. In this work, Sivaji has placed the essence - woman, drum, sun, bird - as singular entities composed as a whole in an oval form. The oval is not a frame. It is a womb, a sound, a breath. woman is not playing but listening to herself. Through the black passage in her closed eyes.  Listening this with the tiny bird birds eye view. With small, still, passionately present. Like a woman who has become the rhythm of pensive music.

 

Sivaji does not paint divinity with ornament. He paints it with tranquillity. And in Beyond Black and White (Season II), displayed around 20 paintings. Each one depicting mist of tranquillity over a river at dawn. Sometimes calm, always stirring inward and outward.  His signature is not a flourish. It is a small living punctuation. A ladybug on grey, a bird on a drum, a crow on a calf. Like divinity in the minuscule, hidden in the mundane life we overlook.