New Paintings

At 2260 Oak Bay Avenue

Nov. 1 - 21, 2009

Preview
Saturday, October 31, 2009   10 am – 5:30 pm
(work subject to prior sale)

Opening:
 Sunday, November 1, 2009
1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Elizabeth Ely, harpist;   Karel Roessingh, pianist

Haren Vakil’s paintings and drawings are a series of humorous non sequiturs.  The artist liberates our imagination in his land of the absurd.  Jazz, Indian and Western classical music, everyday life, architecture, human beings, animals and birds inspire him.  Vakil refrains from attaching any narrative or symbolical meaning to his works.  The viewer may draw meaning out these images; see rhythm in the line, chaos, joy or cynicism in these compositions.

That said training, experience and aesthetic preferences give shape to these creations. Vakil is trained in architecture and his background as a draughtsman brings in tautness in the structured compositions.  The details and neatness, however spontaneous, also come from this end.  There’s a sure sense of when to abandon and when to adhere to a recognizable framework.  The paintings are built around solid, primary colours giving a simplified feel to his otherwise complex and busy compositions.  In spirit his works are reminiscent of surrealists Hieronymus Bosch and Rene Magritte.  Bosch’s works evoked consciousness of sin, malice and violence. From Vakil’s compositions one draws a sense of comical absurdity of life.  His sequences are plainly implausible yet they have familiarity and a certain reality that reaches the viewer.

Vakil has lived in Victoria, Canada for almost 35 years. British Columbia is noted for Native Art and home to several tall, carved totem poles with colourful imagery.  There’s an affiliation between Vakil’s imagery and American Native Art in essence.  At root in both is the primeval element.  There is semblance also to images from Hindu mythology whether it’s multi-headed demons, or multi-limbed deities or the Nandi bull.  But then emblems of the contemporary mingle with all this.

Vakil subconsciously binds various strands with his vivid imagination producing a unique visual language.

--Jasmine Shah Varma, curator and writer on art based in Mumbai