RAJESH RAM: KALA AKSHAR BHAINS BARABAR
Anant Art Gallery, 2007
Catalogue essay: Latika Gupta
Rolling children, grazing water buffaloes, vignettes from days spent at school.. These are the images that are evoked in Rajesh Ram’s latest body of work. Far from being simplistic renderings of nostalgia of past childhood, these are complex palimpsests, thickly encoded with multiple symbols that raise questions about the construction of societies and the relationships that govern them.
A tinge of cynicism may be discerned in Ram’s experience as an adult, his frustrations with having to grapple with, and in a city necessarily attempt to communicate in, a language that is not his own is seen in ‘A, B, C, D..’ Where language is likened to a swarm of bees that create a deafening buzz around a earless, immobile and alienated man.
(excerpt from catalogue essay by Latika Gupta )