Into The Gathering Night
Active as an artist, photographer, designer and filmmaker over a period of nearly six decades, Gopi Gajwani (born in 1938 in the town of Rohri, Sind, now in Pakistan) has always achieved his discoveries through the dissolution of the singular image. Whether he works in charcoal or acrylic, or employs pastel or Chinese ink, or renders his paintings in oils, or explores a combination of charcoal and watercolour, Gopi invites us to savour the electricity of the line that he teases into currents and stipples, into staccato rhythms and glissando sequences. He harvests fields of colour for us, which can be plangent or percussive, tranquil or flamboyant. He remains intensely aware of the prime question of legibility: How are his works to be read by those who receive them?
To this question, in ways subtle and elegant, the artist responds by pointing beyond language. Abstraction resists being relayed into words; it defies the expository and discursive procedures of interpretation. Instead, Gopi's paintings, drawings and mixed-media works act on our consciousness as music does: we are carried along by its patterns of tempo and cadence; we surrender before the effects of syncopation and riffing; the recurrence of beats and pauses builds into a graceful architecture of solace and surprise. We may plausibly regard these paintings as pieces of music, shaped through an interplay of compositional and improvisational energies.
