Snow, blizzards, ice, the grim topography of winter. Caught in the clutch of cold, hazy mornings and dark evenings in New York, I suddenly got a gift from the artist Birendra Pani. An image of Spring, sent via email. It certainly lifts up the spirits, making one’s heart soar like a kite. So if you’re feeling the winter blues, take a whiff of Spring. It’s not too far away!
Birendra Pani did his BFA in Shantiniketan and his MFA from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University in Baroda. He has had several solo and group shows in India and internationally. Last year Pani brought his paintings to R L Fine Arts Gallery in New York and the vivid color of those canvases is a harbinger of spring too. This month he will be showing in a group show at Gallery Indian Contemporary in Hong Kong on January 22.
MEET THE BOY DANCERS
You live and learn something new every day. Until I met Birendra Pani, the genial artist from Mumbai, I knew nothing about Gotipua dance or that it was performed only by young males in female garb. Pani, who is from Orissa, has had a long career in art but was always fascinated by this dying breed and wanted to rejuvenate it with a dynamic combination of dance, music, photography and art. Several eras merge together at Gallery Espace in Delhi, as live dancers dancing the ancient Gotipua dance, which predates even Odissi, in a very modern contemporary art gallery setting, with large portraits of the dancers on the walls.
Painting from childhood, Pani has the heritage of Shantiniketan and Baroda School of Art in his veins, and has always been attracted by the Eastern aesthetic unlike, he says, metro artists who are drawn more toward a western sensibility. Born in Orissa, he has spent time in villages with the Gotipua dancers. His powerful paintings in ‘Re-Vision’, his solo exhibition at the RL Fine Arts gallery show supple bodies and animated faces awash in vibrant colors.
Gotipua dance filled a need at a time when women weren’t allowed to perform in public- now that women on stage are commonplace, is there a need for this? There is because it lessens us all when anything of the human experience is lost with the passage of time. One wonders about the lives of these boys and their unique world which is fast vanishing.
Pani, through his vivid paintings gets a dialogue going between the past and the present, and also with the future. It’s all about awareness – and the dangers of ignoring or neglecting the past. Painting, he feels, is very abstract and one dimensional but combined with dance he takes the story further.
