A romantic intricacy co- exists with Indian painting as a touching presence. In the infancy of our independence, in the short period just before and after independence, the romantic self has been transacted into images at numerous levels of narratives in painting as well as in literature. Krishna’s paintings belong to such a category of transfiguration of the romantic self at different dimensions of narration.
Krishna’s paintings reveal an evolution of this romantic trait in an age of industrialization and technocracy.
The twentieth century capitalism trapped within its crisis of internal contradictions developed interest for rationality and stability in art. But the surrealists hurt by the insistent acts of capitalist war retaliated with a breed of painting that narrated schism in the rational unity of existence, that defied the superstructure of stability imposed by imperialism.
The visible reality designed by the superstructure, was a challenge to the genuine reality repressed under the reign of capitalist terror. In surrealism they exposed the tantalized glimpses of reality drowned to the revolting space of the unconscious. I would call Krishna as the fortunate traveller who launches a journey into the undecipherable planes of madness that is the wilderness of reality.
He wants to trace a path back to the original self from the orbit of the unconscious. Art spreads its cerebral mass of calibre to diverse, complex expanse of existence.
Art emerges from a chaos of mind, body, fantasy imagination, hope, fear, meditation, anger, rebellion, violence resistance and all such elements are composed into a terrible aesthetic unity in Krishna’s painting.
Art reveals the genuineness of its affection as it breaks into irresistable freedom that cannot be tamed.
