The Art of Adimoolam

Sinha

THE ART OF

Adimoolam

Adimoolam

THE ART OF

The Art of

Adimoolam

Gayatri Sinha is an independent curator and art critic based in New Delhi. She has edited the seminal volume Expressions and Evocations: Contemporary Women Artists in India, Woman/Goddess and Indian Art: An Overview. She is also the author of Krishen Khanna: A Critical Biography. Her curated exhibitions include ‘The Self and the World’ (National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, 1997), ‘Vilas: The Idea of Pleasure’ (Birla Academy, Mumbai, 2000), ‘Cinema Still’ (New Delhi, 2002), ‘Woman/Goddess’ (1998– 2001, a travelling exhibition) and ‘Middle Age Spread’ (National Museum, New Delhi, 2004). She has been credited with a Department of Culture award and is also the recipient of a Ford Foundation award.

K. M. Adimoolam’s art resists easy categorization. He brings to his work a genuine spirit of enquiry, and a continually rejuvenating wonder at the generative cosmic possibilities of art. He makes profoundly aesthetic choices, bringing to his abstract painting and apparently realistic drawing sheer, unambiguous artistic skills. Adimoolam is primarily optimistic; his paintings resonate with a pleasure in the sensuality of the medium of oil, its dexterity and movement, and its ability to translate emotion into colour. What all the works have in common is his preoccupation with presences and fields outside his immediate perception, and a graded move towards the ideal space of pure abstraction. This for Adimoolam is the vivid, magnetic other, the field of consciousness, energy or cit-sakti, one that is not individuated or personalized in any way, but which hints at the possibility of the deepest realization.

Mapin

Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd. Ahmedabad 380 013 INDIA www.mapinpub.com

Printed in India

With 25 black & white and 40 colour illustrations

Jacket: Front—See page 61 Back—See page 15