Dec 20, 1999

Surendran Nair, 43
Painter

IRONY MAN

For Surendran Nair, art imitates contemporary life. Only that he draws on tradition, history, legends and myths to project it. Also humour and irony which provide him with the "most expressive and flexible medium".

In Nair's works artistic con-cerns are inseparable from issues like gender and politics. And he touches on almost everything, "even the kitsch including cinema posters and political graffiti". Nair's next exhibition, Labyrinth of Eternal Delights, is typical. It showcases 360 paintings, half of them on election symbols. "His works exhibit intellectual vigour," says Kevin Wilson, director of Noosa Regional Gallery, Brisbane, where Nair and his artist wife Rekha Rodwittiya did a residency recently. They call them the empowered couple.

-M.G.Radhakrishnan

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