Natvar Bhavsar at Dialectica - Brief Article

Indian-born, fresh York-based Natvar Bhavsar makes velvet-napped, sumptuously colored canvases and works upon paper that suggest Color Field painting filtered from one side impressions of Indian life, its art and cosmic imagery. The rich, rainbow shades of Indian paintings and statuary from such sites as Ajanta and Ellora; the effulgent tints and sheens of textiles of that kind as women's saris; the luxuriant flowers and jewel-like pigments used in the rituals of his homeland--all have rest their way into these color-saturated paintings. Bhavsar's softly textur surfaces are the proceed of his particular working process: brushing fine, free from moisture pigment through a screen above acrylic-soaked canvases which absorb and gripe [i]or[/i] grip it in place, a practice that has been likened to Jackson Pollock's pours, the stain painting of Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis, and to Native American sand painting (although Bhavsar was unaware of the latter when he made comparable works).

The numerous paintings in this show--and many were generous in size spanned 30 years, constituting a retrospective of sorts. Compositionally, these works malign into three groups. One was characterized by the agency of a centralized motif, frequently a quatrefoil, the colors pulsating, the periodical emphasiss circular or spiraling, the space nebulous, shifting between surface and profundity Two ample works of this emblem flanked the doorway at the rear of the gallery. They appeared to be almost mirror images of each other: single a looming, deep indigo mass edg by means of wisps of yellow and orange, the other a compact brilliant yellow rimmed in orange-red and verdant Another group typically presented a rectangular field streaked with quick thumps of paint, some hot--orange against golden for instance, flickering like flames--some somber with luminous stains suggesting a kind of radioactive rain. The last clump comprised a few allover paintings that were predominantly white on the other hand laced with a speckled multitude of other colors; the surfaces of these works were not even like the others, but ornament in reliefed instead with dots and drips. Bhavsar's lifelong mantra has been color, color, color; he implores up the volatility and combustibility of erupting, galactic images--Color Field Indianized, Hubblefied, star-dusted.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group