BLACK SPACE WITHIN BLACK - I am immensely happy to meet Rajesh Rajbhar, who is a painter totally dedicated to visual art. - Prabhakar Kolte

 

Artist: Rajesh Rajbhar at Jehangir art gallery, 2022

Concept note

“Expression is an aliveness which can be only felt through experience.”   

I start with a blank canvas and a blank mind and then stories, and images emerge from a dialogue between the canvas and the mind. I indulge in painting with no subject matter but only expressions of endless queue, skyscrapers, movement of people, windows of the buildings, and queue at common water tap and then begin with full energy and feelings which comes out in form of expressions of life. Some expressions are unexplained, but expression is an expression in itself, which cannot be explained. We can see and feel it and thus it’s a visual expression. 

Using a stick as a medium to move the colour from one end of the canvas to the other my “Dripping – Style” technique highlights free and spontaneous subconscious feelings and emotions, which are suppressed for a longer time and with the flow of the colour, they too flow very naturally. I play with gestures of expressions in parts which then forms one whole expression.

With a smooth canvas as a surface, I prepare the base with a flat pigment and play with diverse set of materials. My repertoire includes materials such as acrylic, watercolour, ink, oil colors household paints and equally varied set of tools such as brushes, cloth, metal wires, rollers, tubes, socks, and bare hands too. Thus, these act as a cathartic release for my emotions and thoughts.

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BLACK

SPACE WITHIN BLACK

I am immensely happy to meet Rajesh Rajbhar, who is a painter totally dedicated to visual art. He is young and passionately involved in visual art and he is thoroughly associated with various aspects of this art since he has stepped into the world of visual communication.  He is totally devoted to the art and aesthetic in the field of visual communication. 

I have never taught him but when we started exchanging our views on art and life, we came closer to each other. It was our visual and reciprocal talk on art and life, agony and deep desire for knowledge in art that has kept us deeply connected. As a teacher, I never taught him any academics related to formal art but observed minutely that he wanted to discover a new way of expression. He follows his own way of experiences and communication through his unique way of expression with Black colour to which he is dedicated thoroughly with confidence and faith in himself. He has founded his curious thought process and his desire for contemporary world of art. He has developed an enthusiastic way of expression in the ‘Black colour’ which he started working on huge canvas as if he was trying to discover the hidden soul of black. He struggled a lot but never gave up discovering the breathing soul of black. 

Rajesh is deeply involved in his unique theory of expression in black colour. As a matter of fact, for him black is not a just a colour but his conceptual journey to find out the conscience and soul of black which does not remain a pigment but a medium of communication. It is an eternal journey of unknown discovery of the black which throbs constantly in his existence.    

I personally feel that he is trying to develop a new visual language in black which only he can understand today, but I am sure that his language will be noticed and read by sensitive connoisseurs in future. He is haunted by black and black is responding to this young artist as if the black is not just a colour but two sides of the living darkness, discovered by young artist called Rajesh Rajbhar. I wish him a great future; may God bless him and fulfil his desire of living with black. 

By 

Eminent Artist Dr. Prabhakar Kolte 

Prabhakar Kolte at Jehangir Art Gallery- Mumbai - 400 001

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