Lama Tyagi’s Debut Solo at Lalit Kala Akademi
“Hello, I am Lama Tyagi. And I have a dream!”
Lama mocks himself as a young painter. Otherwise, he just comes near you and his calm voice says slowly, hesitantly, “Hi, I am Lama Tyagi. You can ask me anything about the paintings if you want to.”
Despite his cynicism and a weird sense of mockery of himself, his voice gives away an earnest eagerness to talk about his work. His work in vibrant acrylic speaks a lot to you and for a moment, you don’t want to ask anything. You want to stay longer, in silence with these colours, splashed on canvases with a different title pasted with each of them.
The Paintings Featured in DOTS|DASHES
“It happens so usually.” Lama shrugs. “Every painting has a title. So do these two. They were called by different titles earlier but were shown with a different title in the exhibition – DOTS|DASHES.” He laughs lightly again, as if mockingly, again. “Everyone has a pet name and then a formal name. So do these paintings! Their household titles are different!”
But well, some of the paintings did not require a title. Fishes, after all, are fishes. Street dogs too. But the ‘Fight in the Street Dog’, enhances the impact of the street dog deftly painted in acrylic dots and dashes. The same is the case with the painting titled ‘The Meeting’. I stayed for a little longer with it and then it stayed with me for hours.
Lama Tyagi’s Painting Style and Themes
There is not much remarkable about it. In a quintessential Lama Tyagi way, many animals are sitting, lying, smoking, brooding; in a frame or outside it, looking through it. But the title made sense. I could identify with it. That’s how my inner self responds even now while meeting with people. There are some, just chatting away, some talking about themselves only, some snooty, looking down on you, some pensive and some businesslike. But there’s always, without a miss, an expression of ennui, fleeting or prominent- that I never miss in these meetings.
“Well, it is as if you bring all those persons you talk to every day together in one room! A disaster will certainly happen! Friends on whose jokes you keep laughing, weird friends, noisy friends, chatty ones- all together! This painting originated from this idea.”
Hmmm…You take a long breath. But that’s not what it conveys. Lama Tyagi chuckles again. In his restlessness to explain what he means. “I identify as a poet. You see, you start with an idea and you just start painting. But how the idea will look finally on the canvas you don’t know. My effort is to put across the idea that I have conceived.”
No, it doesn’t get transmitted to paper exactly as you had conceived it- idea or poetry, painting or a poem. But well, it can go as close to it as it must. “That’s the effort.” Lama smiles tepidly. Then there is a glint of excitement, when he talks about the forest he has been to. There is a painting with the same title.
“There are so many sounds and colours; so much to pour out on the canvas!” but then he doesn’t want to paint with people (read other painters) around him. “I don’t feel comfortable with the idea that there are so many people working around you, watching you. Painting for me is a very personal exercise.”
I nod. Writing too is very personal, very lonely too. Lama Tyagi agrees. Painting is a very lonely effort. And it requires a lot of patience! He again laughs lightly casting an indolent look at his paintings. “yes, especially if you are making an entire painting using dots and dashes! How did you do it?” I wondered more to myself than him.
He looks at me and smiles “Well, it teaches me patience. After all, it’s better to fall once from a fiftieth floor than fall fifty times from the same one!”
Weird imagery. But well, that’s Lama for you as a painter- dark, surreal, poetic and satirical, abstract and concrete at the same time. I am looking at ‘The Watchdog’. There are solid squares triangles and colours. But then you can’t ignore a crow sitting with black spectacles. It is a crow or a vague familiarity with the dog too. But the irony of the character is remarkable. It is sardonic, abstract and serious at the same time, more so in the times we are living in.
There are only animals, or semblance of them, no human beings. I instinctively like that. I know, the animals are human and humans are, after all, animals! There are birds, fish, dogs and crows- lots of them! In this sense, the paintings seem, at first look, a comic representation of some folklore. But there is much more to it than what seems to be a child’s interpretation of the real world.
Indeed, some of the paintings are a subtle statement of the times we are living in. I have not as yet been able to wave off the haunting eye of ‘The Witness.’ Again, there are very solid lines (with dots and dashes) and frames. From behind them, a single eyeball is fixed, as if looking at something terrible or real. But the misery repressed in the single eyeball- is haunting. You can almost feel the stifled cry in that single eyeball.
That is the beauty of these paintings. They at times look raw, but the flush of energy can’t be missed; they look abstract, but the stark reality lurking behind them or hovering within them like a cloud cannot be ignored; they look serious, at times musical, yet the satire, the mockery and a quintessential humour picking on you have a looming presence.
And they are beautiful too. The ‘Jazz Notes’ is how music and visuals become one on the canvas. Like jazz, the colours are loud, forms are both solid and tender, and both the classicistic and the contemporary fuse together to make one harmonious piece.
There are other pieces which look ‘pretty’ like ‘Fish.’ The canvas looks pretty with all kinds of fishes drawn and coloured beautifully and symmetrically. In all of them, Lama’s distinct style can be felt strongly. Yes, it has a pinch of cubism, the surreal and abstract and expressionism, yet underlining them is child-like energy, flaws and eagerness that make his work lively and remarkable.
He doesn’t look very satisfied. “We had to arrange the exhibition in a huff, so some things are not as I wanted them to be, but well, no complaints!” he again smiles and then reveals that there were some paintings which were changed from being vertical to horizontal and the titles were also changed. “But you see, the change has opened up a different perspective! I find it interesting!”
As far as titles are concerned, he guffaws again, “the household names after all are different from formal names- isn’t it?”
Yet the titles add another dimension to the paintings- that he might not have thought about. “Everyone has his way of reading a painting. I don’t mind as long as it connects with you, as long as it haunts you and you come back to it.” He muttered something like that.
It took him eight long years to create this work. These eight years were the formative time for him. He travelled a lot and in the process created this admirable work- the work in turn has created him.
Below the exhibition title DOTS|DASHES, the same is written in tiny Morse Code. Succinctly, the dots and dashes that create Lama’s art contain the key to his inner unique world which, one hopes will become wider, luminous and aesthetically more beautiful as this fledgling soon finds his wings and flies vigorously farther and deeper into creative brilliance.
Image Courtesy – Abir Pothi
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