The landscapes and seascapes of Sangeeth Sivan’s paintings are cleverly filtered. Instead of a healthy blue sea and
green forest, we are confronted with a sallow landscape that is molested by hoary splotches and tentacles. When a painter dips his paintbrush into a bowl of water, the pigment diffuses. However, repeated dipping leads to an unpleasant, irreversible purpuration of the water.
The animal paintings are salient and unnerving, to say the least. We have a dog with its head stuck in a pot and two donkeys bearing a tumorous load. I was instantly reminded of
a five-year-old incident in Rajasthan where
a thirsty leopard got its head stuck in an aluminum pot and drifted helplessly about
the village for five hours. The native dog cuts a miserable figure with its clipped tail, its recessed abdomen and its jutting ribs. The nondescript freckled, acid-wash background does a fine job of evoking the disconsolateness of hunger and its accompanying visual impressions. The donkeys have tired, downcast eyes, but the load stole my attention due to its centralization and its pink color.
In yet another painting, we see the uplands. The most prominent element here is the chimney tower, a phallic symbol, which seems to molest the purity of the landscape. The trees are an indistinguishable blurry mass and the houses are shrouded for the most part but the domineering chimney tower is unmistakable. When Antoni Gaudí drew up the measurements for La Sagrada Familia, which is poised to become the tallest church building in the world, he insisted that the church’s total height should not exceed the height of Montjuïc Hill as
he believed that the handiwork of man should
not contend with, let alone attempt to exceed, the handiwork of God.
The paintings warn the viewer about the perils of pollution and other unwelcome alterations to the biosphere. They adeptly and memorably visualize the repercussions of burdening the world with more than it can bear.
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