Riyas Komu

Born 1971, Kerala, India Lives and works in Mumbai and Kerala, India Riyas Komu earned his MA in Fine Arts from the Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai, in 1999, and in 2007 he attracted attention in Europe with his exhibition at the Venice Biennial. The artist’s oeuvre spans several media and genres, but his primary vehicles are sculpture, photography, and video installations. Strong political undercurrents are a distinctive feature of Komu’s art. Affected by his father’s political views and his own experiences as an active member of political groupings, his works are not content to simply relate a story or hang on a wall; they look back at the spectator. Komu’s works often refer to India as a country of paradoxes where immense wealth and indescribable poverty cohabit side by side. In recent years India has acquired a new status as a giant in Asia by dint of its continued economic and population growth, exceeded only by China. But even though the country has experienced economic growth, it performs less well in terms of standard indicators for development; here the country ranks alongside low-income countries. Through his art, Komu calls attention to the complex nature of India, his works reflecting both hope and despondency. Komu is also a passionate fan of football. In the work Left Legs Series from 2008 he manages to bring together his fascination with sports and his political awareness. In a series of sculptures of strangely amputated left legs made of concrete, steel, and salvaged teak from Kerala – his native region – he imitates the legs of real football players. The legs feature complex carvings and surreal anatomical details, and are flayed to reveal sinews, muscles, and ligaments The artist refers to how such athletic legs may feel sometimes, pitting the proud and heroic against the weakened and damaged. The work was created in connection with a series of works entitled The Iraq Project; a series which focuses on how Iraqi football has been caught up in political power struggles during the reign of Saddam Hussein and during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Komu has created an ambivalent work: by referring to the athlete’s body, it incarnates pain and loss for every victory and every defeat. By using symbolism and iconographies of varying kinds, the artist offers his spectators a creative space for contemplation. Stine Kleis Hansen

Riyas Komu Left Leg Series, 2008

Riyas Komu

Riyas Komu

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Born in 1971, Riyas Komu graduated with Painting as his specialization and has since than extended himself to sculpture, photography and video installations. He is also a recipient of K.K. Hebbar Foundation Scholarship and Bombay Art Society Award, 1996 and Maharashtra State Art Prize 1995. Komu was a participant in the 52nd Venice Biennale 2007 curated by Robert Storr. His other prominent museum shows include Paris-Delhi-Bombay, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Crossroads India Escalate at Prague Biennale 5. Other prominent museum shows include Concurrent India, Helsinki Art Museum Tennis Palace, Finland; Indian Highway, Museum  of contemporary Art, Lyon; Herning Kunstmuseum, Herning, Denmark; India Awakens: Under the Banyan Tree, Essl Museum, Austria; Finding India, Art for the New Century, Museum of Contemporary Art; Milan Museum show, curated by Daniella Polizolli and India Contemporary, GEM, Museum of Contemporary Art, Hague; India Now: Contemporary Indian Art Between Continuity and Transformation, Provincia di Milano, Milan, Italy, India Xianzai: Contemporary Indian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Shanghai; Modern India, organized by Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM) and Casa Asia, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture at Valencia, Spain. His recent solo shows include Oil's Well, Let's Play!, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan; Subrato to Cesar, Gallery Maskara, Mumbai in association with The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai and Safe to Light, Azad Art Gallery, Tehran.

Riyas Komu says that his work draws from the public domain. His subjects are charged with significance bringing about a disturbance depicting an element of political disquiet. For Riyas, art is a medium for social comment on the situations the world is facing today.” Komu deploys portraiture, also, to register a cryptic side or oblique remark on contemporary culture. Riyas Komu’s recent paintings and sculptures propose a bold re-formatting of the genre of portraiture. Komu’s portraits are close-up shots of nameless and dispossessed individuals redeemed, visually if not materially, from the flux of life at the margins of globalization” – Ranjit Hoskote.

“Riyas Komu’s recent paintings and sculptures propose a bold re-formatting of the genre of portraiture. Komu’s portraits are close-up shots of nameless and dispossessed individuals redeemed, visually if not materially, from the flux of life at the margins of globalization. These are faces of people captured in the attitude of waiting, of foreboding or memorializing: these are faces of witnesses, who depose before us, silently obliging us to acknowledge the genocides and mass migrations, the famines and desolations of our catastrophic epoch. Komu deploys portraiture, also, to register a cryptic side or oblique remark on contemporary culture. He does not not permit us direct and easy access to his subjects: in his handling, the portrait become a fateful reminder: we see the Other as framed by the televisual eye, for Komu’s figures are often marked as though with masking tape or black identity-protection bands or partially concealed by lattices. Signs of immunity from recognition, these semiotic interpolations double as threats of de-personalization: the rawness of the human predicament is sometimes camouflaged by these refinements, whoch convey both security and constraint in relation to Komu’s figures”. – Ranjit Hoskote

He paints pictures based on photographic references from the print and television media. His subjects are charged with significance bringing about a disturbance depicting an element of political disquiet. For Riyas Komu, art is a medium for social comment on the situations the world is facing today. His canvas has youthful and the immersion in urban iconography is perhaps most evident in his works. What is remarkable about the paintings of Riyas are the multiple media he uses. The works in oil are thick and over-layered, and this gives them more dimension and life. The figures and the backdrop spring out and hit you and there is no escaping from what first appears stark and simple and seem to get more and more complex as it grows on you. About his video: He has a passion for making documentary films. The one he worked on a couple of years back had an unusual theme –“The politics of nostalgia and food.”  A video movie of eight minutes, it was shot on the streets and roadside restaurants of Mumbai. “The documentaries I make are an extension of my feelings and views, and they have similar themes, toughing life’s many facets”, says Riyas.

His recent solo ‘Mark Him’ was held at The Guild, it mainly consisted of photographs. About these works Riyas says, “I have not known a greater joy than that of watching guys in shorts kicking a ball around. I have done the feetie myself a number of times. But there has always been a gnawing feeling in the back of my head that kept on saying: the best of goals are not always 'the best of goals'. So I set one for myself — to use art to redeem the place of our footballers in the society, in our history. Therefore, MARK HIM”.