Silence has immense beauty when it is observed at the perfect time it is truly needed or else it would seem displeasing and perilous that irritates the people around. When silence is applied in art, the result will be a repertoire of creations that are voluminously vocal and preponderant in transporting the messages across.
A suite of paintings of Yeldo Thannikottu, a contemporary painter, curator and visual arts teacher who has been active for the last thirty years, unveiled at the Art and Soul Gallery and Academy at the Waterfront on Tuesday, is nothing short of ‘Silence’ became vocal and effectively communicates with the audience.
Titled ‘The Silence’, the week-long-art expo was opened by Matti Sirvio, an acclaimed artist, curator and art gallerist in the presence of a number of people.
Born in India, settled in Oman, and working as a Visual Arts Coordinator with the Indian School Muscat, Yeldo is ‘contemporary’ in terms of his attitude towards his works and has been relentless in his pursuit.
Most of his works, acrylic painting on canvas, are expositions of emotional imprints of the physical and metaphysical nature of our milieu. A cursory glance at Yeldo’s oeuvre reveals more than what the viewers expect as his art has gone through various phases, styles and approaches only to find its ultimate resting place in the individual human being’s existential matters.
Through his works, he tries to strip the images off their varying colours and brings down to a few basic shades ranging between whites, browns, greys and yellows. He decidedly avoids using strong colours such as green and red, the colours that had strong presence in their varying intensities in the early works, mainly because of the awareness of the times and context of the production of these works.
With less human content and more realistic images, Yeldo’s paintings are a kaleidoscopic view of the reality and beauty of the forest, river, wild animals, domesticated animals, agriculture and pasture. Yeldo has folk knowledge of forest, village, river and is very much committed to different branches of indigenous knowledge of the methodology of Hermeneutics with his soft colours.
As an artist with a strong philosophical foundation, Yeldo believes in the constant evolution of the human beings and he sees it as a phase; a transition, like his paintings so far. The grids that one comes to witness in his works and the silhouetted figures behind the lit areas of those structures doubling up as housing complexes, depending on the viewer’s associations, not only hold the pictorial space intact, but also hold the attention of the people. Yeldo has not deprived his protagonists of their due space. In some of the works they come forward to declare their existence.
“The language that Yeldo uses is fresh and suitable to his purpose, and also capable of underlining the transition from the earlier style to the present one. The contemporary, as understood generally is not a trend or a style with glossy surfaces, shining facades, glittering looks and eye-catching sophistication, on the contrary, it is the ability of the artist to deal with his living experience in a meaningful way and convey it to his contemporaries with a convincing argument,” Johny ML, an art critic, commented.
Yeldo holds an NDFA, a National Diploma in Fine Arts Painting with first class, from RLV College of Music and Fine Arts and MFA in Applied Art from SALA Mysore, Karnataka. He has won the Raja Ravi Varma Award in 1997, Kalabushan Award for Best Art Teacher in 2006, Kerala Lalithakala Akademi Scholarship for Graphics in 1995 and has also won the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi Grant for Solo Art Exhibition in the years 1996, 2003 and 2018 consecutively. He has conducted 19 solo art exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions and art camps, besides curating many groups and solo exhibitions and artist camps..
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