N.N. Rimzon

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N. N. Rimzon was born in Kerala's Kakkoor village in 1957. He studied sculpture at the College of Fine Arts in Trivandrum and followed it up with an M.A. in the subject from Baroda's M.S. University. He also studied in the Royal College of Art in London with the help of an Inlaks scholarship. During this learning phase, Rimzon's figures seem to reflect the concerns emanating from a leftist background in Kerala. The sculptor's later works reveal postmodernist nuances in their attitudes, but the social-radical statement continues as an important motif, particularly in a work as direct and unambiguous as The Tools.

Rimzon has held shows in galleries in New Delhi, Amsterdam, New York and Brisbane; these also include theme-based events and group shows. He was nominated for the Sotheby's Award for Contemporary Indian Art in 1998. The artist lives and works in Kerala.

“Rimzon does not stylize but imbues the essence of ancient imagery with that of his own contemporary minimalist disposition. His house – a home and shelter for tender feelings and sustenance becomes a temple. The shape schematized within the mass and volume, under its geometric linearity turns almost into an idea while retaining the emotive physicality of its skin-like texture. Its connectedness with other forms, sensations and thoughts is set off by a literal yet lyrical proximity or merger, by the paradoxes of scale alteration and by what the artists calls the experience of a dream. His lover couples seem to be impregnated by the life breath and unaffectedly, erotically graceful like young people we know. The pull and push between energy and immobility there, between eternal flux and stasis lets one intuit vast forces acting in tune with some logos that guides everything and reverberates in it. It is as visible in the images anchored in archetypes as in those that were triggered by topical issues. The vertical figures alluding to tirthankaras withstand threat from the weapons of labour’s aggressiveness and of social violence. Their placement in the classic mandala of containment and protectiveness imbibes characteristics of installation. The swords pointing at the man in prayer or undermining the peaceful stability of the home and the full pot are to be accepted; uncertainty, pain and death to be endured on par with relishing serenity, warmth and pleasure.

The artist knows that nothing can be named with precision and understood completely about objects which are directly accessible yet ever metamorphosing, influenced also by our subconscious and by the mystery of origins, living and dying. Hence, the artist aims only to evoke the sheer encounter and mood of the condition as a whole whose cogency as well as contradictoriness remain complementary and permeable. Although his sculptures are solid, physical volumes, from within their massiveness and concreteness one can grasp basic, subtle phenomena, which echo in the artist’s poetic imagination and in the gravity of his intuition that includes a degree of conceptual means. His imagery is open, too, inducing the viewer to a distanced and simultaneously immediate contemplation that allows for multiple reading.” 
--- Marta Jakimowicz