Shridhar Lyer

Uma Nair

Shridhar Iyer is known as a pilgrim in search of the intangible. A silent vibration of a mantra emanates from his countenance and you think of discipline, simplicity and devout absorption that transcend the frontiers of experience to give us a moving
moment. His profile photographs on Facebook clearly unravel a quest for something that is not merely temporary but something that is ephemeral and indeed incandescent in its deeply tenured terrain. His paintings are Pollockian canvasses that are indeed not spectacularly beautiful—but they are in depth conversations about the spiritual leanings that are specifically cited within the compartments of his interior journey.

Here are a series of embedded thoughts that are made of narrow strips of fragile and pliant strokes that lay stretched in quadruple layers of warps and wefts on the different layers of colour that appear and disappear, bringing up the lower levels to the top, sending it back down the brims of the canvas, bringing it up again in a different way so that it looks like the fiber lines are meshing, tangling, and organically growing together. Before he takes them out of tension, they are aligned to certain gravitational forces that are unseen but hold them together in a lock in embrace that tingles in its minimal moorings.