Digital Art: With Rahul Gajjar’s exhibition of ‘prints in new media’, digital art has arrived in India.

Guided by Ganeshji: One day Ganeshji asked me if I wanted a ride with Him on His Mouse. Without batting an eyelid, I agreed. This exhibition displays images that He showed me on our trip together. Thus speaks Barodian Rahul Gajjar about his prints in new media displayed in Mumbai. The new medium is the homely computer. Gajjar began “painting” on it, he says, in a spirit of playful fun, as a process of teaching himself the limits to which he could push this technology. Then he made prints of the paintings he liked, showed them to art-sensitive friends and came up with a collection dedicated to the “spirit of the genius in man”. Gajjar’s own personal genius who has inspired him, the real Ganeshji in his life, is Bernard Lejeune of the National Association of French Advertising and Fashion Photographers who whisked him off to France for specialised traning in photography. This gold medallist at the National Photographic Salon of Japan and Asahi Shimbun Exhibition calls his works prints because like traditional etchings, lithographs and woodcuts, this medium too demands technological intervention before the final print is made. And because they can be made in multiples and shared with a wider audience.

India’s first digital artist: Rahul Gajjar hasn’t held a paintbrush in months, doesn’t believe in easels, and regards dabbling paint on a palette as a quaint anachronism. When this 38-year-old starts off on a work of art, he uses tools that would raise M.F. Husain’s eyebrows. His brush comes with attached wires; his palette is software-compatible; and his canvases whir smoothly out of a gigantic, state-of-the-art printer. The man who calls himself India’s first computer artist says: “This is the future. People are scared about this new medium, but artists have to get used to the new technology.” His works of art, showing at the India International Centre Annexe Gallery in Delhi, have drawn enthusiastic responses in Vadodara and Mumbai – from artists like Bhupen Khakkar as well as the man-on-the-street. And they’ve opened up that old issue: it’s magnificent, but is it art?

In a new medium: …….most of us are familiar with the routine and conventional uses of the computer and its technology. To be able to extract this kind of work, or even have the imagination to do so, is quite commendable, to say the least. ……Rahul Gajjar’s prints in new media explore a number of themes – seeds, germinating seeds, nature, pots and so on. Some of the seed prints are almost cosmic, reminiscent of the brahmanda images. Most of them are abstract, worked in great detail and care.

Gallery Notes: Gajjar who is based in Baroda, specialises in prints using new media. He mixes graphic design and photography to create abstract images. His medium, he says, demands technological intervention so they (the prints) can be made in multiples and shared with a wider audience. Gajjar’s inspiration comes from ‘Ganeshji’ and he believes that “knowingly or unknowingly, man is almost totally dependent on machines, from the simplest pulley to the ultimate in electronic wizardry.” But since technology itself originates from man’s genius, Gajjar dedicates his creations to “the spirit of the genius”.

Digital art – Following a shadow of tantric philosophy: If one eliminates philosophic background of the works, then, it discloses a play of homogeneous visual illusion between the artist and his visuals, between the computer (technical medium) and the visuals (medium of expression) and between the computer and the artist. For the viewer this finally creates an illusion of space, an abstract infinite chasm that appears ideal to fill back the abyss. Unlike most artists who use readymade software like PhotoShop, Corel, Director, etc., Gajjar has used the computer language of C++ to program each work. The obvious visual effect ….is an equally merged area where it could appear pasted in the other programs. Many details, for example, forms in black over black, that emerge and submerge would turn quite flat if done in the above mentioned programs.

Portrait of a Pixel Wand: It’s tempting to dismiss it as computer jiggery-pokery but Rahul Gajjar’s psychedelic artforms, some surreal, some earthy, are deceptively different. He calls them prints in new media. His palette: the computer. His theme: the cycle of birth and death. His leitmotifs: peacocks, parrots, ducks and fishes.

City Speak: The brush is replaced by a mouse, the canvass is Power Macintosh and the colours are pixels on the screen. ‘Prints in new media’ by Rahul Gajjar demonstrates the amazing and exciting vistas of art in general and print in particular. He explores this amazing liaison between art and technology. His paintings reveal an artist’s fascination with technology that is aptly summed up at one of his exhibitions, “Man is almost totally dependent on machines, from the simplest pulley to the ultimate in electronic wizardry. How man’s genius evolved such an amazing array of machines over the centuries makes a story that is both absorbing and instructing. This exhibition is dedicated to this spirit of the genius.” And the genius within him transforms simple forms like circles and ovals into flying parrots, dancing peacocks, colourful vases or flowers.

Mumbai Art World: What is art? This is perhaps a very difficult question to answer, but one thing is definite. Today, the boundaries of art are being pushed further and further back. No longer is the artist a person who works with brush, water colours or oil paints and paper or canvas. He now works with a wide spectrum of media, in a variety of ways, to create works belonging to a number of schools – or perhaps no known school at all! What about creating art with the help of a computer? Why not, when the computer has invaded every other aspect of our lives? Rahul Gajjar is one of the few Indian artists who uses computers to produce his “paintings” – something which is rapidly gaining in popularity abroad.  This was not the kind of art Gajjar was taught when he graduated in Graphic Design and Photography from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda, but his real learning in his chosen field began when he was whisked off to France by a member of the National Association of French Advertising and Fashion Photographers for specialised training.