Oxymores

Oxymores; what reflects  itself

For some time now, Kiran Katara’s research and studies have focused on one of the great challenges of Western aesthetics: transparency.

Let’s remember how the Flemish masters of the Renaissance used glazing to let light into their paintings. By multiplying layers of opaque colors and veiling them with lighter filtering layers, they obtained reflections. At the same time, their interest in “still life” allowed them to emphasize and magnify everyday objects.

At about the same period in history, Chinese scholars were practicing the art of ink and transparency, revealing the void they called ‘flying white’. As for the precious lacquered objects that reflected candlelight, it was the general atmosphere of the place that was illuminated in a vibratory way.

From this common denominator of the two civilizations we can distinguish specific points of view belonging to their philosophy and spirituality. But instead of seeking to maintain antinomies between West and East, near and far…, “Oxymores” reflects and absorbs opposites to enable us, through representations of everyday objects, to question transparency and the power of light. Kiran Katara abandons the conjunction “or”, which forces us to make choices and clearcut decisions, in favor of the coordinating conjunction “and”, which allows for agreement, even harmony, between, for example, the real and the imaginary, the figurative and the abstract, above and below, the open and the closed, the clear and the blurred…

“Oxymores” brings together opposites that harmonize through mutual contact in order to  create new perspectives.  Literally and figuratively, they give Kiran Katara the opportunity to reflect and reflect upon light.

‘Oxymorons’

The series of drawings I am presenting here is an opportunity to highlight and to put in tension invariants in my work: the black colour, the matt texture of the drawing, the economy of mean, the game, the poetic emergence. Until now I have questioned the mathematical figure, the drawing of the writing and abstract poetry. Today I’m teasing out figuration.  The forms invited (in this case large glasses) are simply tools for thinking. I like to show the process. I am searching.

I explore the theme of transparency by observing glass as a material and as an object and I draw using oxymorons, variations, iterations, shifts, series, mirrors and reflections.

My ‘drawing-paintings’ aim for complexity as much as calm; a silent atmosphere. I reveal transparency by using opaque ink, oil and wax, usually without water (no hard and fast rules but exceptions).

Reflections turn the world upside down and confuse the observer.  They question our relationship with reality and illusion; the vision is kaleidoscopic, fractal. They humorously show ‘upside downs’, inverted landscapes or our own image, playing with disappearances and apparitions.

There’s no perfect realism here. The enlargement doesn’t offer a clearer vision; it’s more a question of moving away to catch a glimpse of something. The matt (absorbent) material of the paint and its size draw us into the drawing. It invites us to become tiny actors. Like Alice in Wonderland, we are confronted with the absurd, the paradoxical, the bizarre, the blurred.

The jumps in scale and the variation in the height of our gaze change our point of view. The containers chosen (glasses, vases, flasks, etc.), like the contents (liquids, solids, etc.), are objects from my daily life, captured on the spot, caught in the urgency of the act of painting. Enlarged, they become a matrix-receptacle. They remind us that, apart from their practical function, they have a primordial function: that of the imaginary (Baudrillard).

Kiran KATARA

[1] Pas de règles absolues, des exceptions.

[2] Baudrillard, Le système des objets, 1968