Critiques

In ideal and only ideal terms, an artist is a singular creature. He, or she, has a set of gifts which makes him unique among the generality of mankind. So that, unlike any others, he is not a figure in a landscape — he is a shaper of the landscape. In body or mind, he is the explorer of nature, the ubiquitous being, who does not find but makes his home in every continent of mind.

Patna's Sunil Kumar is still in passage, trying to chart the unmapped spaces of our inner universe. So this work. It is a tough undertaking, for such an artistic passage is littered with the wrecks of earlier sea-farers of the spirit. Now, though the artist draws upon the material or organic structure of life-cycle, he yet hopes to elicit from it elevated life-meanings — compassion for one thing.

The chemistry of human body, in due course ( and given that we are largely self-aware beings) secretes the juices of higher emotions. On one plane, the acts of body are repellent, or merely clinical to such an extent that only medical people can be at ease with them. The commonality does not have their cooling objectivity.

In the case of artists, as this one, it remains to be seen if he has transformed his high aims in successful art. Let each viewer decide for him or herself. But then Sunil Kumar appears to have the necessary derring-do to climb upwards towards towards truly artistic messages. This requires untold renunciations, much brain work, rigorous vetting and editing of one's ideas and aims. This is why art making is not for everybody, it has to have divine madness. In the meanwhile, I applaud Sunil Kumar's hardiness and wish him the courage of his conviction.