Gallery Espace presents a landmark show by the artist E.H. Pushkin, one of the founding members of the Radical Painters and Sculptures Association of the late 80s. This is the first significant show by the artist in Delhi and will feature 15 key works executed between 2007 and 2008 never previously shown. If one were to place E.H. Pushkin historically in contemporary Indian art then one would have to begin with his contribution to the Radical Painters and Sculptors Association - a short-lived group of young artists formed in late 80s in Baroda, that stood for a more socially and politically conscious art. The Group conducted a couple of exhibitions and camps in Baroda and Kerala, but finally faded out following the suicide of the charismatic K.P.Krishnakumar, one of its key figures. This collective was formed on the lines of left-wing political activism through what they saw as alternate art practices. Narratives emphasized the political, the humanitarian and the social and everything international, commercial and Western was rejected. Some of the artists included in this group were Alex Mathew, C K Rajan, N.N. Rimzon, Shibu Natesan, K. Reghunathan, Surendran Nair, Jyothibasu, T.K. Hareendran, M.C. Sunilkumar, and Anita Dube, who was also the chronicler of the movement. The artist E.H. Pushkin, being one of the founding members of this radical group was obviously influenced by the ideology that governed it. As the artist states: “An artist's sensitiveness to images, space, time and life in general is a part of his creative equipment but its pursuit is risky. A blank space expanding without boundaries over him and the current social conditions have to meet at that one point where they fulfill each other. If a social system has to remain healthy, it needs the sustenance and support of culture. It is precisely herein that the role of art in ennobling and refining human nature finds its place in a meaningful social system.”

Having graduated with distinction in Fine Arts from M.S. University, Baroda Pushkin moved back to Trivandrum, his place of birth, and studied Fine Arts at the Master’s level from the College of Fine Arts there. He then moved to the Middle East. Based in Saudi Arabia, Pushkin worked as an artist and volunteered with the National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development (NCWCD) there, exhibiting paintings and posters for animal rights. He also exhibited graphic works for nature conservation during the two World Conservation Congresses held in Montreal in 1995 and in Jordan in 2000. After a significantly long break that lasted over a decade, Pushkin moved back to India in the year 2000, and once again returned to exhibiting his works, to begin with in Kerala, with solo shows such as, Space Of The

Invisible Days, Alliance Francaise, Trivandrum (2000); Life Is Robbed, Museum Auditorium Gallery Trivandrum (2001); The Beautifully Built Yellow Warship Sailing, Kashi Art Gallery, Kochi (2006). In the last two years, he has also participated in some important group shows, namely, Rebel Graffiti, Travancore House, New Delhi (2007); Open Eyed Dreams, Auto Hanger Prabhadevi, Mumbai (2006); A Compensation For What Has Been Lost, Travancore Art Gallery, New Delhi (2006); and Paper Flute, Gallery Espace, New Delhi (2006).

In this exhibition, titled Somebody is talking about your Life, the noted critic, R. Nandakumar describes Pushkin’s works today as more reticent and subjective in their expression without being ambiguous. Pushkin’s imagery is minimal, stark and in a way, direct. In the works in this particular show, most of the objects depicted, commonplace and of everyday familiarity as they are, have emotional associations of a very personal kind for Pushkin and they assume an iconic dimension.

Having worked in the NCWCD in Saudi Arabia, many of Pushkin’s works have latent allusions to environmental concerns – as can be seen in Colour of History, an image of the endangered species of birds such as the hornbill, as well as in Documenting an Indian Rhino … where the tiny figure atop a raised platform, posing with a ‘human’ self-consciousness to be photographed is fully aware of its endangered status. Through some outstanding works Pushkin also gives expression to his concerns about the privacy of the individual being impinged upon brought out by the title of the exhibition itself

In the painterly poetics of Pushkin, imagery is the material correlative of this world of experience in which thought and feeling share borders. His works are a metaphor of the passage to an experience which is always close at hand but we are hardly aware of. The surreal in Pushkin’s art has to do with capturing the evanescent and the fugitive sensations at the threshold of consciousness before emerging as emotions

Pushkin recently brought out a collection of poems in Malayalam published in 2005, which has the same title as one of his earlier paintings, The Space of Invisible Days. Moving between the two mediums of expression, it deals with this very idea of fleeting sensory evocations before they become concretised as conscious experiences as his paintings do