Worth a comment

Shibu Natesan looks around at the world as a photo-journalist might.

It's difficult to decide which comes first "" the amazing vortex of his price, or his imagery. Shibu Natesan's art is often in your face. It is at once centred in the medium of the media "" the television image of violence in distant lands, or the photographer's flash as he captures yet another mood, or moment, that semi-second when, in some part of the world, a slice of life changes forever.

London-based, Kerala-born, Amsterdam-trained. Natesan wears these badges in his CV like the rites of passage, a journey that, in recent years, has turned increasingly political.

There are images of war, hostility, violence on the one hand, of entertainment, consumption, thrills on the other. And somewhere, keeping meteoric pace, is a body of work that has spiralled, according to an index provided by Apparao Galleries, from a modest Rs 45,000 in 2002 to almost Rs 9 lakh for a 3'x3' canvas.

Natesan's voice wasn't always a questioning one, though photo-realism has been his chosen oeuvre. "Painting," he once said, "is something which has been so much done, throughout history, that while you are painting you can sometimes go through other painter's thought processes and understand why they did certain things."

His own reasons may be atavistic, the voice of a young generation seeking answers, provoking reactions from his often large canvases. Certainly, it is a reaction against the establishment with whom he is often confrontationist. And in that, each work becomes a commentory of the times we live in.

All of this should prove restrictive; it doesn't. Natesan's magic-realism, in a sense, brings together war and peace as twin symbols, so even when there is little hope, there is also the possibility in other works, of indulgence and, therefore, the miracle of life. "It takes a revolution," the artist had once commented, "to make a resolution."

For now, if his prices are climbing, in part, says a Delhi gallerist, it's because works are difficult to come by "" certainly in India. Natesan's works are often picked up faster than he can make them, and so the few works in circulation in India have been viewed often.

This limits his range for the non-collector unfamiliar with the broad canvas of his works. But even now, when he's at his most expensive, the gallerist advises that it's a good time to buy because "his prices will continue to rise in the future". Clearly, here's a commentary on life that is unlikely to get dated any time soon.