RAJAN TOO

This is the second part of a two-part retrospective of CK Rajan (b. 1960, Kerala). Over four decades, the artist has developed a unique practice characterised by visual intelligence, modesty of means, and a subversive critique coupled with formal precision. Ordered chronologically, part one featured works from the 1990s, while this exhibition is focused on more recent outputs. The two exhibitions are connected by ideas which reappear in works made decades apart. 

Rajan Too presents a series of small oil paintings (2013-14) and (2018-19) which seem at times reduced to monochromes but contain subtle narratives, humour, and art historical references. The effect of panoramic scale in miniature, and the alienated figures that inhabit these paintings, recall the artist’s cigarette packet works (1989-90). Sculptures (2010) feature implements associated with domesticity and agriculture. They belong to a cartoon world in which scale, configuration, and function mutate. Called Psychic Objects, here the estrangement of the everyday brings hints of violence and psychological distress. Sketches for these sculptures already appear in the artist’s sketchbooks from 1993. Most recent are small painted bronze works (2022). Taken from prototypes made in clay, these retain impressions of the hand that modelled them and form an index of iconography from the artist’s oeuvre. An exception to recent work is the painting Blood Under the Curtain (1994) which introduces the exhibition. 

The exhibition is accompanied by the monograph Seekrajan, which contains illustrations and commissioned writing covering the breadth of CK Rajan’s practice.