Beyond Myth

Dhi Artspace hosted an exhibition, ‘Minotaur- Beyond Myth’ by Yogesh Ramakrishna and Ryan Abreu. The two young artists featured for the first time at the gallery. The show is titled after ‘Minotaur’, which is a mythical character with a face of a bull and the body of a human.
Goa-based Ryan Francis Abreu’ narration lies between the style of dark humour and the hidden private romantic time between lovers, producing an image with somber and a very ugly distorted characteristic. Ryan says, “I choose etching, which is 16th century technique and my work is in black and white, and the challenge is that you cannot erase your mistakes.”

About his work he says, “The empathy towards feelings of pain from the society is encoded in symbols with meanings other than its literal ones. The fragile events from the past and the future predictions of change in development of personal realm and society are parallel. My works are about scripting a visual language of revelation to move the viewer’s soul.” He says, “My inspiration is Laxma Goud”.

Yogesh Ramakrishna Kamble’s art practice is marked by strategies of creating history at the border between history and fiction. He employees a wide range of mythological propaganda-strategies resulting in dream-like visuals where fantasy and reality coexist.

Pune-based Yogesh explains the difference between the two artists. “You can see mythological stories and daily cultural rituals are the most important fragments of my works which inspire me. For him, they are the personal truths unproven by science or rituals as an act of belief oftradition.”

Through the wash and Gauche drawings, he traces and creates self-interpretive narrations as a response to the current social structures, living culture, architecture and the local beliefs. His visualapproach towards the content exhibits the impressions from the Indian militaristic style along withcontemporary symbolism and hidden eroticism. He creates his own characters like legends for his storyline who serve as rays of confidence and belief within a society, rescuing from danger, and providing a blueprint for behavior that is deemed acceptable by the group.

“My works deal with historical, cultural and interactive research of theparticular area to bring out the importance of various believes, local myths, story tales, rituals and theirpresence in the present society. My outputs serve as analysed documentation of various folklores and I believe in the form of visual archive,” he adds.