The Pandemic Still Lifes by V Ramesh

V Ramesh's current body of work, a series on still life at Gallery Threshold, carry strong emotional resonance and are much more than the physical objects they represent as either memento mori or vanitas genres. Ramesh loves to juxtapose that which is alive in contrast to something which is deteriorated showing the impermanence of the body. The process of painting engaged him over the pandemic period in an intensive yet spontaneous quest to retrace his journey afresh by using watercolours and gouache.

Ramesh looks for that transparency of being able to look through a membrane of a vessel and see whole world in its interior. Rather like the Doha of Kabir which invokes the image of transformed worlds in the inner space contained in the water pot. Ramesh's watercolours have that same quality -- of allowing the viewer to be able to look through something that is impermeable and instilling or imbuing these images with poetic metaphors. This has been liberating for him as, besides re-looking at simple objects, he has succeeded in the grounding of imagery in time and place by re-imagining and even creating a memory. The various stations of his quest reappear transformed into a fuller experience.

One of the themes that have occupied V Ramesh is the connectedness of mankind through the oneness of human experience or existence. He constantly questions the physicality of the body and tries to go beneath the skin to develop a plural idiom in his art practice. The idea of the sacred runs through his works as a muted melody, however, this coexists in a dynamic diversity of images from disparate origins, through sustained connections. Ramesh speaks of suffusing his subjects with feelings and strong emotional resonances. This makes the ordinary mundane daily objects become extraordinary - IANS