desmond lazaro

The hand leads the eye leads the hand…

19 September 2008

Desmond Lazaro's work straddles both worlds: the traditional pichhvai painter's and the contemporary studio artist's. The dichotomy in the two is significant. One lays emphasis on the celebrity of the individual painter who is expected to articulate a new and original style; the other expects a process to be followed, the resulting works of which serve the temple and its pilgrims, ideally without care for signatures. The pichhvai tradition expects the art to be narrative, or to fulfil a devotional purpose. The modernist painter in Lazaro, however, is programmed to emphasise the individual, 'secular' image. In keeping the two worlds separate, and combining the stereotypes of both, Lazaro drives us to create a different point of view from which to appreciate his work.

Lazaro's work for this exhibition can be further broken broadly into two types. The first makes mundane objects into precious artefacts, their preciousness enhanced by his use of pure jewel colours. He makes precious and valorises the everyday, the relics of an India that is fast disappearing. The selective isolation of an element suspended in an eternal space makes it trapped as if for inspection, for delectation. The open space invites the viewer to enter and live within, alongside the relic of what was once everyday, but has now been made precious in gemstone colour. The unfinished portions of the paintings invite the viewer to participate in its process and method.

The second group of more recent work have movement and narrative. The earlier works are more the things he loves about India: objects that are for you as the viewer, and for him as a painter, precious spaces to see. The second set, are spaces to be, spaces which he inhabits, where the colour and form of India is not enough, but is the space in which he contemplates and negotiates a life.

Dr. Naman Ahuja