blood drop silence bomb drop violence

About Artist

Born 2 June 1972, Delhi When the darkness of night falls on me, all the shadows leave my way; when the darkness of night falls on me, I remain alone…” These lines aptly encompass artist Rahul Chaudhary's ‘burning desire’ to express his inner self. “It’s like unleashing the bursts of emotions into a timeless space,” he says. Rahul Chaudhary's creations delve into human psyche, invariably caught in a state of flux, swinging between reality and illusion, trapped between outer and inner world, and alternating between materialistic and spiritual leanings. It’s an endless conflict between the real and the dream world that cuts deep into one’s psyche, torn between real and abstract areas of mind and heart, leaving one in a state of imbalance, that the artist tries to portray. He explains,” Caught in a time warp, one often gets lost in the dream world. It’s a hallucinatory mode where one fails to grasp the reality. In the dream world, there are no inhibitions whereas one is driven by logic and rules in the real world where the self is controlled and one’s desires are suppressed. Self-gratification thus becomes a distant possibility. The unfulfilled desires from the dream world sometimes resurface in the real world or vice-versa. The resultant disenchantment and chaos grip the two worlds. Their overlapping causes friction.” The artist informs, “I often visualise a perfect system where I am at complete peace with myself. However, when the hidden desires and the delightful dreams face the test of reality, they fall apart.” The contrived faces and figures he portrays are a representation of the uncontrolled self’s unfulfilled desires. He explains: “We tend to hide the reality from the self or try to serve its fabricated version for deceiving our senses. This innocuous individual tendency sets off a chain reaction, transforming itself into a broader social phenomenon. Ultimately, this blurred vision hampers our grasping of the reality. I have done self-portraits that are symbolic of this human fallacy.” Rahul Chaudhury has studied art at the Delhi University. Reminiscing on his artistic development, the artist says: “I have been painting from my school days. During my formative years as an artist, I was a keen observer of life around me. I used to stroll aimlessly at markets, railway stations, monuments, parks etc. Just to feel the ambience, and to depict it.” Even though the artist remains curious about socio-political events around, he has become more receptive and sensitive to emotional and spiritual content of life. Explaining the spiritual hue that is now evident in his work, Rahul Chaudhury says, “The physicality or the anatomical structure of human, animal, plant and man-made structure do not attract me much. The journey of my work is definitely in an inward direction. Now, I look to explore the inner recesses of human mind rather than understanding the materialistic world. It’s a perennial search that has just begun.” (It has been edited from my own notes and is published in the website of The Arts Trust Gallery, Mumbai)