N. N. Rimzon: Sculptures and Drawings   

Reception with the artist:  Friday 7th March, 7.00 to 9.00 pm   

Exhibition continues until 25th March 2008. 

The Guild Art Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of N. N. Rimzon’s sculptures and drawings. N. N. Rimzon was born in 1957 in Kerala and received his B.F.A. in sculpture from   College of Arts in Trivandrum and took his Master's Degree in Sculpture from MS University, Baroda. N. N. Rimzon earned an M.A. from the Royal College of Art London. A recipient of many awards, his work has been widely exhibited both in India and Europe.   

“In a world of increasing contrasts, N.N Rimzon wishes to restore a basic wholeness. This may be natural for the artist born and living in Kerala, which has preserved its verdant habitat, arts and beliefs while facing the effects of globalization. His method where intuition, without contradicting, prevails over intellectual concepts, eventually pares it down to the most rudimentary elements. The ancient permeates the present-day throughout N.N.Rimzon's art. He has been working with a restricted number of potent images-signs which while bearing clear meaning are latent with richness of manifestations and enigma. He draws on archaic layers of experience from a time when human mind and feelings did not distinguish between mundane and divine. In a rather similar manner he uses material from art history. Among his main motifs is the earthen pot - the womb of fertility. When paired, it may allude also to fertile masculinity. The egg, the shell, the stone and the mountain relate to its iconography and actual roles. The loaded simplicity of those volumes can be compared to and partly derived from the element of abstracting that is intrinsic in old Kerala art. N.N. Rimzon does not stylize but imbues the essence of ancient imagery with that of his own contemporary minimalist disposition. In his sculptures there is an emphasis on ample, dense, rounded volumes evoking the breathing tactility of animated beings simplifying and somewhat abstracting the shapes. Its connectedness with other forms, sensations and thoughts, is set off by a lyrical proximity, which the artist calls the experience of a dream. Through N.N. Rimzon’s works the viewer gains a palpable, close contact where individual, half-realized memories blend with archetypal paradigms.  

Rimzon always draws alongside sculpting. Such drawings are not preparatory sketches; they revolve around motifs and meanings central to his sculpture. N.N. Rimzon uses rudimentary outlines, which although are rough, register a tender tremor, their intimacy touching the raw nerve. Sometimes his strokes on the flat paper consider structure, volume and mass through silhouette contours, surface, concavity and hollowness. From the varied lines, the opaqueness and tonalities of charcoal and dry or oil pastels, he creates environs suffused by a dense atmosphere emblematic of primeval, states and feelings. Frequently it is an ancient forest with trees of tight-smooth, spiraling branches whose energy is spreading under a heavy nocturnal sky impregnated by the sacred and illuminated by phantasmagorical misty stars. Sporadically, a human figure becomes part of the landscape, as archetypal as nature and as dual of character as this world, sometimes a bearded sage, a wondering hermit or a warrior seated in the lotus position.  

Avoiding the specifics of this reality with its system of casts and outcasts, N.N. Rimzon captures the mechanisms of subservience typical to this country but universalized enough to point towards traits common to all humanity. His figures belong to the Indian physique and aesthetic. Whether at the moment he dwells primarily on precious, affirmative manifestations of life or on violence and death, the artist has been saying all along that wellness has to be known together with pain, since both inescapably shape our existence. N. N. Rimzon desires to awaken a transformative potential through the unfolding of the spectator’s experience.”  - An excerpt from the catalogue essay by Marta Jakimowicz.  

N. N. Rimzon's recent solo - ‘Seven Oceans and the Unnumbered Stars’ Sculptures and Works on paper, was held at Bodhi Art Limited, New York. 

N. N. Rimzon is one of the internationally acclaimed artists  and has  had many international shows, amongst them,  Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India, Curated by Chaitanya Sambrani.  Perth Cultural Center, Art Gallery of Western Australia. Asia Society Gallery and Queens Museum, New York. U. S. A.;  Busan Biennale, Busan ;  ‘Sub Terrain’: Body –City – Sitting contemporary culture in India , curated by  Geeta Kapur, House of World Culture , Berlin , Germany ;  El Filo del Deseo – Arte Reciente en India, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey MARCO, Monterry; White/ Light at Queensland Art Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane;  New Indian Art at Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, England;  Lines of Descent – The Family in Contemporary Asian Art, Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. 

N.N. Rimzon is now Principal of Raja Ravi Varma College of Fine Arts, Mavelikara, Kerala.