K. P. Reji

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Born in 1972, K.P.Reji received his M.F.A and B.F. A in painting from the M.S. University, Vadodara. He is the receipient of the Sanskriti Award for the Young Artist-2007, Sanskriti Foundation, New Delhi. K.P.Reji has participated in several major exhibitions including Tough Love, curated by Shaheen Merali,  Plataforma Revólver, Lisbon, Portugal; Snow curated by Ranjit Hoskote; Horn Please: Narratives in Contemporary Indian Art, Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland; Tolstoy Farm: Archive of Utopia, curated by Gayatri Sinha, New Delhi; Roots in the Air, Branches Below: Modern & Contemporary Art from India, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose; CIGE 2009, China and SHContemporary 08’, Shanghai represented by The Guild, Mumbai; Art Asia Miami, 08, represented by The Guild Art USA Inc. His recent solo exhibitions being With a Pinch of Salt was held at Nature Morte, New Delhi in collaboration with The Guild and ‘Just Above My Head’, The Guild, Mumbai.

“K.P. Reji attempts to see beyond what is mundane or familiar to us because of the opaqueness of visibility. The act of seeing in the logic and the context that his paintings primarily present to us is the question of political amnesia that leads towards a cultural blindness. A significant facet in K.P Reji’s work is the intimate way in which his work integrates personal and the social aspects, thereby liberating meanings through disassociation and relocation from their commonsensical associations. His assemblage of personal and social worlds is one of the most important linguistic devices and tactics, which enable one to cross the thresholds of representational politics. His works are neither the eulogy of the sufferings of the working class nor a tale of their heroic deeds; instead they attempt to problamatize these representational polemics by presenting them as the ‘being’ in the process of ‘becoming.’

K.P. Reji watches his human figures not so much through urban media as through the imagery and colouristic, almost physical tactility of modest domestic architecture. The simplified, pastel hued house walls are softly textured and a little hazy, much like the nude human bodies, which belong to those houses. The painter seems to trust in the redemptive power of their un-assuming, sincere owners, above all in the grace of loving. His triptych, too, is built around strong motifs, which appear to determine and separate everything – the verticals of the homes and the pillars. Their interaction and unity, however, reveals a dependence on the sustaining forces of tenderness. The metaphor here equates a woman’s love with life-giving milk. HHhhe merges with the large pot in her hands from it towards the man depicted in a pose of receiving as, and another stream-like column descends through the centre of the composition. The gentleness of the brushing transforms the literal into the lyrical. His paintings display a matter of fact quality. His work is multifaceted and complex in its analysis of the individual’s relationship to his external environment. His canvases explore the connection between psychological states of mind and socio-political behavior”. – Santhosh. S

K.P Reji currently lives and works in Vadodara