Priyaranjaan Behera’s painterly execution is consistently nebulous supple, broad strokes are lushly handled with the relatively boundless area of his typically large compositions. The viewer of Happening in Silence can experience simultaneously the visceral grip of the magnetic gaze of the equestrienne on the left of the composition and the deconstructive awareness that horses conglomerate of cogently defined individual marks. Such handling allows the painting to maintain a certain level of ambiguity. When working in conjunction with the potent themes and motif, such ambiguity is able to provoke questions about power discourses that demand deliberation. However, the enigmatic quality can also be at the expense of vulnerability and authenticity. In the current series horses juxtaposed with one another on either side of the canvas, one with chiseled clarity and the other obscured in lyrical pentimenti, seem to symbolize a recurring oscillation between concrete affection and insouciant panache.
Priyaranjaan’s masterful handling of media, in his
fifth solo show includes acrylic paintings on canvas and paper, which serves an
expressive purpose beyond the tough luxuriance of his mark making. The
diaphanous mottled quality describes the wild horses and constitutes a
terrifying presence: beyond the functionality and decorativeness of the
accessory itself, it transforms into a symbolic form in which masculinity is a
veiled, mystical presence and the theatricality of seduction is complex and disguised.
Inquiries into class are, like the gaze piercing through those veils, a
haunting queasiness beneath the forceful hush. But such concealment is
self-imposed, the veils voluntarily worn. In the drawings too, the artist offers
another theater of masculinity. His sensuous horses deliver unfettered and
unclouded erotic shockwaves they emanate the glare of intimate disclosure. His
brush marks register bravura, they are generally more angular, staccato,
and filled with rapid, nervous energy. Instead of serving as socio-cultural
signifiers, according to the artist they are entryways into an individual’s
personality and predicament, their symbolic associations woven into a backdrop
to each character’s emotional state.
Priyaranjaan’s horses’ thrusts forcefully
forward, rhyming with the curve of the assertively raised leg. The all-knowing
intransigence of the complexion, anchored at the painfully scarlet reads more
like a challenge than an invitation. Most works in this show follow a similar
construction: singular, strong figures in pulsating spaces. In a way that,
tellingly, recalls the veneer of theatricality in these paintings is simply
shattered at first contact by the monstrous proportions of overt, inundating
sensual energy. Such energy finds another, even more tactile outlet in Priyaranjaan’s
drawings. These relatively small pieces skin-like drawings with their highly
sexualized posture and melodic, flowing lines. The nuanced tonal washes congeal
into corals and fire. The drawings seem to almost tremble under the intense
private pleasure they are obliged to bear. The headstrong vulnerability
embedded in all this sensationalized sexuality, evokes a sense of authentic
emotional connection in the viewer.. There is, however, a curious side effect
of this apparently apolitical stance. For in these paintings of luscious
revelry and exquisite vulnerability, largely guided by the painter’s emotional
instinct and searching sense of conviction, Priyaranjaan achieves a
concreteness of viewer experience that is possibly stronger and more complete
than a labyrinth constructed with intellectual tenets.
It is clear that Priyaranjaan has taken remarkably
different routes in scripting a theatrical habitat for their subjects. A large
part of this difference springs from a peculiar contemporary division between
the provocative and the empathetic as painting attaches itself to an exterior
cause. The enigmatic urgency in the works situates the viewer at a probing
distance, in a spectatorial role, luxuriating in social glamour and drama when
all of a sudden confronted by the characters’ haunting gaze and demand for a
fair hearing. The visceral torrents of solitary emotion forcefully absorb the
viewer who is then obliged to decide how to handle this gratuitous entry into
an intensely animal world. In either event, theatricality is today more than
ever implicated in paintings of horses as both the gazed upon and the spectators
have become equally active players. The multiplicity and subtlety of
treatments, of which we had a glimpse through these works shows, sparkles
hopeful excitement for the continual evolution of painting’s capacity to give
voice to a muted presentences to comply, to masquerade, to entice, or to attack.
Abhijeet Gondkar
2025
"Happening in Silence”
Solo show by
Artist
PRIYARANJAAN
Opening on Tuesday, 4th November, 5:30- 8 pm at NIPPON.
Date: 4th to 8th October 2025
Gallery Time: 3pm to 7pm
Address
Nippon
30/32, 2nd Floor, Deval Chambers
Nana Bhai Lane, Flora Fountain
Fort, Mumbai - 400 001
More details: 9820 510 599
RSVP: Email: nipponbombay@gmail.com
RSVP: Sunday & Monday Gallery will be closed
