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Art critics
Sohan
Qadri with his painting liberates the word meditation from its fashionable
taste and brings it back to its proper origin, uninfluenced by Western
propaganda, misunderstandings and corruptions. - Heinrich Böll
(Nobelprize lit. 1972, Köln)
You may
look at his paintings as symbolic representations of the "serpent power"
(Kundalini)
or as mere form and colour to enjoy as pure art . . . an exceptional artist.
- F.N. Souza (Painter and Writer. New York 1976)
His art
is enigmatic art, immaculately executed.
-Jenny Bergin (The Ottawa Citizen, July 7,1972)
Sohan Qadri,
in a few words, believes in an inner and outer sphere in the life of man.
Striving to establish contact with this world within, with one's true
self, he sees as utterly essential for all of us. His art belongs to something
of the most refined one can perceive, something which touches "the ultimate
secret". We can experience his works directly and with strong presence,
and thereafter we can slowly decipher and extract their secrets. - Virtus
Schade (Art Critic and Writer, Copenhagen 1978)
Art
review
This
is more than just an encounter with colour: Qadri travers into the subliminal
layers of his own psyche as he gives us a textural terrain that celebrates
the very genre of abstract expressionism.
Some of these works can burn into your consciousness: they actually make
you unconsciously partake of the rite of an artistic baptism of sorts.
These are mesmeric compositions that command an automatic reverence.
It is as if Qadri is the modern man who understands the primacy of symbolism
and the artis´s kinship with primitive man. Then the act of creating
for Qadri is like a performance that rests on the ritual that becomes
more than just an invocation.
Qadri´s
abstract works speak of the infinite possibilitis in space and time. Perhaps
because his is an odyssey that chooses to work along the expressive constraints
of experience. There is no elemental stuff here, only the geometry of
higher and deeper aspirations. Of course each frame is more like a realisation
of varied levels of experience.
There are depths of spiritual seamlessness and the rhythm of surfaces
that live within the sea of abstractions.
Keshav Malik once said that Qadri´s work is not a "done thing"
- and indeed it is not because this is art that is perhaps brought into
being by an inner experience that comes after years of contemplative concentrations.
There are certain deep insights that the perceptive state registers that
cannot quite be understood by all.
There are also certain states and phases of timelessness that helps the
artist to find a unique rhythm as well as a resonance. In that resonance
you see a lyrical quality - a soft sequential flow in which the fullness
of the abstraction becomes not only conscious but even integrative. That
is why though some of the works are so inherently minimalist, you are
aware that they have arisen out of a maximal impulse that has sifted and
sieved the aestethtics of formation. While the conceptual flavour in the
show takes a backseat what emerges forth is a prayerful unity. In which
colour and texture weave into a blend to give us a positioning that comes
from elsewhere. It is as if the colour filters in and dwells in certain
crevices that suggest a germinal idea. While colour becomes the root of
all emotions. For Qadri colour becomes the bhava on which rests
the very intonation of rasa. Sure there is a depth of emotion,
of introspection, of the Buddhist feel of chants and the iconic engagement
of space and the lithe linearity of the line.
Once in an interwiev Qadri had said, "My paintings are characteristic
for their emptiness and peace combined in a radiation of power. It is
not really necessary to separate oriental art from western art. Energy
is universal and one for all life. Deep and true aesthetic perception
is never geographically conditioned. The intuitive experience speaks all
languages and knows of no formal boundaries."
When you remember those lines you can actually partake of the spiritual
fervour that rules the mind of Qadri. Thinking of Qadri´s couplets
also helps us to understand his thought process. In his I am a dot
series he wrote:
I am a dot/born out of the Dot/
passing by the dots/
dying into the Dot.
In another one that seemed more poignant he wrote:
I am a dot/on the tip/
of a creator´s pen.
When you keep these words in view and look at the works again there is
perhaps an intense yearning here for that ultimate union, the Nirvana
that each being stretches towards and you realise that this artist does
not assert himself in any way.
But here is an artist who provokes you into thought, someone who unconsciously
probes hidden embers within you by presenting the play of colours on a
single space so that words do not flow. What flows is the uncanny and
potent power of silence.
Uma
Nair (New Delhi 2002)
Book review
"The Dot and the Dots" is the piquant title of a slender volume
of verse by Sohan Qadri, born Punjabi but now a citizen of the world settled
at Copenhagen. His first love was painting, literature a second interest
and hobby. The very first poem of the volume, five half-line long ( or
is it short!), a dot of a poem, underlines the intent of the title.
The Line
is the foot prints
of the Dot
on the face
of The space.
The volume then is a line made of similar dots, a circlet of the pearls
of wisdom like the celebrated Rubalyat (sufi poetry), a garland of gnomic
verse where a world of meaning is packed into minimal words. Each poem
is a comment of ready rules for the common man. The very essence of Buddha´s
teachings gets distiled into the telegram.
"In
the loss of longing
Belonging gets lost
Hence emancipation"
Worldly success
hinders and precludes spiritual progress
.
"With inward rising
All else is raised
Skies are reached
With outward rising
All else is demeanced
Hypocrisy is preached"
The paradox
of life lies in its cyclic nature where birth and death merge into each
other, where the beginning is the end
"The
seed dies
Into the root
And the first shoot
To be born again"
and again
"The feet
Following their own footprints
Retreat
To reach the source within"
He bids us
however beware of dogma.
"The Truth
Cast into idea
Loses its truth
The mould takes hold"
N. Meera Raghavendra Rao Madras 4 September 1989
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