WHITTLED SPACE - PIRAJI SAGARA
November 10 - December 22 , 2017
Piraji Sagara found a way to internalize his experiences and to unleash their meanings in water colour, pastel, relief work, ornamental scraps, glass bead fragments, copper and brass cut-outs and wood. He worked on paper and canvas and later on wooden boards. Two things brought him into the limelight both in his own country and abroad: nothing he painted conformed to photographic realism but his paintings were impressions that played with the abstract and, yet, brought into being landscapes in bursts of colour or bold black strokes; he used the texture of his medium and ornamental scraps not as decorative articles but as integral fragments of the composite.Piraji has emerged from early experimentation to consummate artistry. His work has integrity, individual style, thematic vision, the aesthetic of both his inherited cultural traditions and his unique personal impression, and the use of materials that makes his medium one of exceptional mastery. His vocabulary has grown since the mid-fifties and his voice comes up like a song in wood. He is a poet in his vision and a painter in his soul. It is Piraji’s uncommon vocabulary as an artist that makes magic of his work.