Ranbir Singh Kaleka

Contemporary Indian Paintings, The Chester and Davida Herwitz Charitable Trust, Sotheby's New York, 12 June 2005, lot 64

Canvas has recently been re-stretched and re-lined to address losses in the lower right and light craquelure in gray background. Vertical cracking in leg, visible in catalogue illustration, has also been addressed and consolidated. Stable condition overall.
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Born in the Punjab in 1953, Ranbir Singh Kaleka studied painting at Chandigarh University before receiving the Charles Wallace Scholarship, which enabled him to complete his M.A. in painting at Royal College of Art, London. Throughout his career, Kaleka has experimented with different media and often combines both painting and video art in his installations. His first solo exhibition was at Art Today Gallery in New Delhi in 1995. He received the National Award from the Lalit Kala Akademi as well as the Sanskriti Award. Most recently, his work has been showcased at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in December 2012.

Twisted Rope is an arresting assemblage of organic forms in strange and perplexing locations, set against translucent areas of colour. A knotted ball of rope is twisted into a sphere, resembling the long braids worn by so many Indian women. Petals appear to fall from the sky in soft pink hues. Opposite, the contorted figure of a man appears despite being enveloped in thick fabrics. A pallid grey hand attempts to lift his lower garments yet it remains ambiguous whether the arm reaching down from above is resisting or encouraging the gesture. This composition evokes the dream-like works created by Surrealist artists, in particular, Salvador Dalí. Time and place are superseded by Kaleka’s desire to focus on the scene itself. “There is a process of meaning-making where I arrive at an ‘event’. This ‘event’ is a physiological state, which employs images that have a universal familiarity and taps into our collective sense of memory. In painting, the ‘event’ may be created through a configuration of people and objects. The stance of the body, the trajectory of the eye, the texture of the surfaces, the vigour (or otherwise) of the painter’s hand all contribute towards creating what I call an ‘event’, the reading of which is not linear and not necessarily temporally or geographically specific but carries the psychological buzz of familiarity or an emotional twinge of recognition.” (Ranbir Kaleka interviewed by Latika Gupta, ART India Magazine, 2008-09, Volume XIII, Issue III + IV, p. 49).

It has been said that Kaleka’s work 'appears both incomprehensible and grotesque, yet on further study it reveals something intimate. Its amorphous forms set off by the grotesquely anatomical Michelangeloesque figure with its sexual overtone, its strong juxtaposition of twigs, figure and machine - these all conspire to make the painting almost incomprehensible. Yet the situation portrayed does not threaten us in spite of these things; rather, it takes on a glow of fascination. One can think of the wonder a child feels when left in an attic to play among the crowded old things of his parents.' (Daniel A. Herwitz, 'Indian Identity and Contemporary Indian Art', Contemporary Indian Art, New York, 1986, p. 26). While Twisted Rope places the familiar in an imagined context, further study of the work displays a hypnotic world, suspended in time.