The masculine in art is the fast track in this age of the post-modernist. It sees, absorbs and them imbues its form and content with its own reflection. It transfers on to canvas, the immediacy that is its response to life as it rushes past. And this capturing the present continuous moment from the point of view of the male gaze is what makes this reflective instant a challenge that few artists are equal to. One such artist is VijaykumarDupatre, who takes this forward in a deply sophisticated and subtle manner.
His works have thoughtful quality heightened by the deep and almost somber hues that form his palette. There is repose with an air of brooding that hovers over his canvas. And yet it is not gloomy, but instead beckons the onlooker into the depths of its being as he allows that glimps into its core. The make gaze, it has been proved, is different and so is its ability to record and recount its perceptions. The concerns are more individualistic rather than shared.
Then masculine art like art of the feminine, do have threads of similarity that link to others in the breed. While the feminine versions veer towards the plural and the collective, there is a lone ranger that lurks in art created by the males of the species. The psychological reasons are deep rooted to the point of being primordial – where the deep seated desire is to be king. After all, there can not be more than one king of the jungle! It is this world-view then which in turn impels the creation of this aloneness in art. This is not to say that there are no twinges of loneliness in this aloneness, but the overriding factor is still the desire to be monarch.
Hailing from the Western Ghats, Dupatre’s canvases are awash with the water laden dark clouds of the monsoon and the mystery of the sheets of water that pour down the skies. It is an interplay that is exploding on the hot, arid plains as the land rolls towards the ghats. For like the parched earth goes through the angst of creation before it bursts forth in a dance of joy, so do his works. The inscrutability before the culmination is complete as is the conviction of the final arrival.
There is a pulsating energy in Dupatre’s work and he carries this energy through to the last stroke. The unfolding of each work has a fineness and delicacy of flowers unfolding – silent but stunning in effect. And it needs quietude again almost of primeval level to step into the works to explore their depths.