Inquiring eyes linger over a monochromes field - bright colours, spreading out in deep liminescence, cover a whole canvas. There are very few signs that one can decipher, albeit lines or shades to be grasped, to be interpreted. Mostly the colour emanates its vigour and glows out of itself. Only when you look closer, you can discover that is something behind, somthing hidden between this monochromes field. there is a lot of blue that shines out of a green surface, there is a deep red that emerges from a bright yellow. it seems that two or three layers of monochromes colour are put above the other, hiding the deeper one and trying with all force to emerge from the depth. But the upper crust of colour, the upper layer keeps a steady stronghold. It only allows to be inscribed, to be accomplished by other forms: graphic lines, very often creating forms of veiled sexual or at least erotic indications, other that form animal or wild beasts, but all of them dancing on the surface of a significant and signifying colour. In the Samkhya philosophy we find the unmanifested, the un-differentiated as the primordial nature of things, the unmanifested side of our being. It is the essence that is instrumental to create all that will be differentiated in the world. Avyakta is the source and ultimate depth of what lies embedded in most nature, the Mulaprakriti: the undifferentiated cosmic substance in its highest form, the abstract substance or essence of what later thorugh various differentiations become the various forms of, concrete or sublimate.
This comes to my mind when I look at the Painting of Hemraj. His paintings help us to reach a point of thinking through meditation, a point of wordless and unintellectual understanding, which lies behind signs and symbols. his paintings lead us on a path that combines meditation with conciousness. Meditation, the means of reaching a world beyond thinking, is an important cancern of the artist. his painting are meant to bring peace for the onlookr and the painter. They should be a sublime representation of feeling beyond thinking. Thus you could attain "Anand", eternal bliss, spiritual joy. then only you could reach "anyatra dharmad anyatra adharmat", an expression from the Upanishads that was used by Nietzsche for his highly influential work"Jenseits vin Gut und Bose" (Beyond good and evil).
But an artist is not only a philosopher. He deals with very basic thoughts, very human emotions ny creating images, figures and symbols. Here we meet the art of Hemraj in another surrounding. In his own words and his own modesty he tells us that he wants to paints the space between two thoughts, the void (Sunyata) - like the clear sky framed by two clouds. He wants to paint the perfect non-being, the perfect void. Thus, his monochromes colour, his hidden under paintings, show us the way to reach a perfect non - thinking, exactly as we have learnt it from the buddhist mandalas.
But why do we find some kind of drawing, nevertheless dancing or resting on the plain colours? why do we find broad, seemingly fast brushes on the surface, squares, and spaces showed against each other, intersected and interwoven colour plains that are put one next to the other, rarely intermingling? Those are his instruments to depict our emotions, our human vigour. According to Hemraj human beings are not only mentally conditioned, not only parts of Brahman and Atman, they are as well parts of the primordial Man: The Purusha. This explains our "wildness", our animal - like condition, which os both covered and concealed by the intellectual and spiritual power and quantities of men, or showing off at the surface of our human being. Hence, his animals, his erotic or sexual allusions show the dichotomist nature of men. the presence of abstract forms and figurative lements is no opposition for him. It only shows the manifold and multi-facetted aspects of Man. His intellectual way leads us from Avyakta to Vyakta. We reach the state of mind which is "anyatra dharmad anyatra adharmat", yet we find ourselves embedded in the primordial nature of all creation.
There is a third aspect that deserves our admiration for Hemraj's work:
The pure beauty, the aesthetic brilliance of his paintings that give us utter delight. We can enjoy his reds, greens and purples, we can get absorbed in his canvases, we can follow the artist' path into the depth of his works. And we can deeply moved by the narrative elements that lie on the surface of his abstract works. The artist is able to procure mere pleasure and at the same time means to emerge into deep philosophical thought. the artist is a medium who can unite all forms of being to an"overall picture". One is stunned by the emotion and yet hight intellectual pleasure that we can excerpt from his art. The mostly jubilant colours- or the deep black that cavers those colours in some paintings - give us a sensual thrill,a areward for every glance we throw at his canvases. Yes, his paintings are icons of meditation and transecendence. But they are also a great pleasure for mind and heart.
It is not necessary to unveil his links and roota to eminent arist like Kaninsky, the abstract expressionists, and - very astonishing - to the neew picture of Gerhard Richter. It might be more interesting to meditate over the psychological similarity and a typological relation of his use of colour to that of some of the most impertant paintings of the late middle-ages: Bernhard Strigel, Georg Fruhauf, the Portuguese and Spanish Renaissance painters and even some Dutch artists of the same time. This will still have to be discovered and researched. For the morden onlokker, It is not neccessary to know those inner lines. He can enjoy the art of one of our foremost abstract painters of today.
Ernst W.Koelnsperger
Art Collector and Art critic
