Senior Chennai artist K Shyam Kumar’s drawings and sculptures are on display after 15 years
The Hindu
K Shyam Kumar’s intricate dotted drawings, years in the making, are on display with his sculptures after 15 years
K Shyam Kumar’s drawings command the viewer’s undivided attention. Each painting is exquisitely detailed, a continuum of lines and dots that forge into forts, pyramid-like structures and humanesque faces. Part of a pen and ink series titled The Steps for Mukhti, the drawings are on show at an exhibition, My Planet, at the Varija Art Gallery in DakshinaChitra.
The show features 15 drawings and 25 sculptures in bronze and granite. These drawings, which are on layered and textured surfaces, are part of his works from the 2000s.
The Chennai-based artist and sculptor, who prefers to work in seclusion, has not had a solo show in 20 years. “I take at least four months to six on a painting,” he says, of his long-drawn out creative process. Shutting off from the noise of the world, Shyam often withdraws into his own, consumed by the work. “It all begins with the dot,” he says of the drawings, which contain thousands of dots each. “It demands utmost patience and for me, it is a meditative process.”