Veteran artist-printmaker Krishan Ahuja recently concluded his retrospective exhibition at the AIIFACS galleries. With relatively less footfalls invited by this space, the galleries are a blissful haven for serious art watchers, left to enjoy their interfaces with art in sacred quietude.

Ahuja’s art and the space he chose for display, therefore, stood in a virtual continuum of each other. What a waste these works would have been amidst the chatter of footfalls, noise and banter present day art socials invite, leaving not the respite for a singleundisturbed moment to commune with the art!

Over the years since his inception into the field, Ahuja’s art has ensued from under various hats ~ with studies, drawings, prints of various genres, painting in different mediums, his love of photography, and most recently sculpture in bronze, not to mention his lifetime’s role of teacher with College of Art.

It is apparent from the contour of works he has done over time that for all of his dexterity and versatility in transiting from one form and medium to another, Ahuja has a deep line of calm and consistency running within him that steers him clear of fissures and vents in the terrain of his vocabulary, characterising it with a smooth, unbroken texture, at once an opiate, as also a hallmark of his own persona.

With steadiness as the virtual leitmotif of his art and his prolificacy, Krishan Ahuja has experimented with method, material and form in keeping with the wont of art and artist, one step at a time, letting each experience seep and sow as a seed into the earth, emerging from there with new vigour and life ~ nothing short of something as intriguing as the Biography Of A Soul!

Though evidently closest to nature in his approach to the world around him, imbibing from it with all deference and care, he has plucked carefully out from among its bounties the human by way of form and the five elements by way of the matrix to play it out on.

Accordingly, the ripples that are stirred by the gamut of his works evince from the atmosphere of air, water and fire, as much from the earth and the sky, without extraneous noises, clutter or density of matter to weigh down upon its autonomy and sanctity of existence.

There is a uniformity of form running through his works, tremendous strength in his lines and purity in his colours; but together they only soothe, never overpower.

His sensibility is one of restraint, preferring to understate, suggesting more than expressing, allowing for experience, memory and imagination to come into play as one goes back and forth.

The works seem to wait with bated breath as a bride, to be taken and appraised, the painting scaressed for their pure smooth colours and fluid lines, the sculptures, more sensitised when trellised against the light; the raised fingers beckoning like creation reiterating its existence, perhaps even in a cry for survival. The photographs are socially powered, in a narrative of people, places and their circumstances.

Above it all are the artist’s own humane concerns, his leanings and perceptions, and his personal service rendered towards them with meticulous method and a system that seems to have governed his life and his art, watching life and people, revelling even in his struggles and patterns to coin his artistic vocabulary out of it.

Not to forget the very handsomely designed handbook to document the show, if only the text had been put through some semblance of a proof read!