'Life' oil on canvas with silver foil.
size- 3x3
The current body of works come at a stage of Ruchin's life when both he and his artistic practice are going through a transformation, yet catching him at a moment when age comibining with his masculinty urges him to 'settel down'. the works mirror the anxieties of his experience...imagining/living life savouring experiences...growing but somewhere trapped. Pictorally he has settled into a visual scape...playing with the compositional complexities offered by his peculiar human form..and his love for silver+gold foil work together with their oxidising properties.
one thing that seperates ruchin from many artits i know is his natural knack for by passing art history. dealing with a theme like 'last supper' or the iconography of the 'burden' does not pre meditae his conceptualizations. this refusal to fall under the 'tyranny of knowledge' and yet experience...articulate 'Life' is what gives him and his art their 'freshness'. 'The Last Supper' is simply an memory painted...a dear last dinner with a friend.
one may notice that in spite of all their freedom and fluidity Ruchin's males get trapped within their frames ...looking out...pushing out...yet trapped. Compositionally it layers the works with a 'twist' ...making one smile with his formal play. Also even within a relatively small body of works....there is a refusal to settel down, to be forever on the edgy/experipentative mode is always going to be there.
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'Stage' oil on canvas with silver foil. size- 3x3
Burden- oil on canvas with silver foil. size- 4x4
Holding on to wisdom- oil on canvas with silver foil. Size- 4x4
Silver Bells.- oil on cavnas with silver foil. size- 4x4
With Friends Oil on canvas with Silver foil. Size- 5x5
The Last Supper- Oil on canvas with Silver foil. Size- 5x5
One of the early struggles for Ruchin in his artistic journey was to forget his prodigious talent. A hereditary engagement with traditional painting for the Swaminarayan sect ensured that Ruchin threatened to stumble on his own codified visual language as he began his formal journey into fine arts. From then on it has been a story of 'learning to forget' and 'learning to control’. Tracing such pressures to be conscious about his style right from his early years as a student.
Had it not been for his untamed imagination Ruchin Soni would have headed straight into lifeless stagnated visual vocabulary? But, his unfounded desire to express his experiantialities...to push his skill to the limit through experimentation...and his refusal to 'forsake' his traditional background, (in an attempt to chase a new contemporary) has been the driving force behind Ruchin's artistic practice.
Over the years Ruchin has lucidly amalgamated his background, the exposure to contemporary (coming through his thick hard years at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M S University Baroda.) and all that he has learnt and unlearned. A fascination to re-understand /articulate his masculinity, a continuous re-visitation of the spiritual and a refusal to settle into a definable narrative mode are the easily definable characteristics of Ruchin's work. It is the manner in which these elements combine to inform and layer his narrative impulses that leads one to be enchanted by the 'frames' Ruchin conjures up.
There is a certain focus on the male figure...often they are cast in contextual voids, large and looming...dominant yet trapped within the woodwork of the frame. Ruchin is one of the few artists who use the 'frame' as a complimentary extension of the surface. His enchanting draftsmanship allows Ruchin to bend and twist his 'objects of representation’, creating form, which are idealised, romanticised, yet brutalised.
A lot of this comes from his training with conjuring images of divinity, but the love and the anguish are straight from his lived experience.
Had it not been for his untamed imagination Ruchin Soni would have headed straight into lifeless stagnated visual vocabulary? But, his unfounded desire to express his experiantialities...to push his skill to the limit through experimentation...and his refusal to 'forsake' his traditional background, (in an attempt to chase a new contemporary) has been the driving force behind Ruchin's artistic practice.
Over the years Ruchin has lucidly amalgamated his background, the exposure to contemporary (coming through his thick hard years at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M S University Baroda.) and all that he has learnt and unlearned. A fascination to re-understand /articulate his masculinity, a continuous re-visitation of the spiritual and a refusal to settle into a definable narrative mode are the easily definable characteristics of Ruchin's work. It is the manner in which these elements combine to inform and layer his narrative impulses that leads one to be enchanted by the 'frames' Ruchin conjures up.
There is a certain focus on the male figure...often they are cast in contextual voids, large and looming...dominant yet trapped within the woodwork of the frame. Ruchin is one of the few artists who use the 'frame' as a complimentary extension of the surface. His enchanting draftsmanship allows Ruchin to bend and twist his 'objects of representation’, creating form, which are idealised, romanticised, yet brutalised.
A lot of this comes from his training with conjuring images of divinity, but the love and the anguish are straight from his lived experience.
Ruchin Soni is a painter, based in Deradun, currently enjoying an artistic sabbatical with his wife teaching art at the Welham Girls’ School, Dehradun
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