Retrospective of Kerala artist KP Reji takes a look at his evolution as an artist

One of KP Reji’s works on show
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Baroda-based artist KP Reji turned 50 in 2022, a good time for a mid-career retrospective of his creative journey . Seeing his works from the mid to late 1990s when he was still a student of art one gets to see how far he has come in his practice. The Good Earth, at the Kerala Museum, gives an insight into Reji’s oeuvre of the past 30 years.

Spread across the four gallery spaces, the display including 75 of his works is so designed that the exhibit begins with some of his works as a student — first at Kerala Museum’s Art Centre, founded by philanthropist R Madhavan Nayar, in the early 1990s, and at the MS University Baroda. Curator of the show Suman Gopinath explains why it is called The Good Earth [inspired by Pearl S Buck’s eponymous classic], “Reji paints everything — the daily life of the people while being extremely political. There is a certain lightness to how he expresses himself. Like how Pearl S Buck’s novel is.” The exhibition is being presented by Kerala Museum in association with The Guild Mumbai.

Mapping his evolution

For Reji, this is an exercise in revisiting his past and evaluating his work. His discoveries were “reading the graph of my evolution as an artist — how I use images differently and how my palette has changed.” If his early works are covertly political with a profusion of figures, the latest ones are unapologetically so. He once said, “It is a delight to find paintings in the common and every day.” 

KP Reji
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Everyday sights of children going to or at school, and people going about their lives find expression. Themes include displacement, farmers, livelihoods, government machinery and urban living. Mapping the trajectory of Reji’s evolution one can’t but from notice how political the works get. “Sometimes you have to directly address things!” The 2021-2022 series ‘Police in the Garden’, ‘Police in the Forest’, and ‘Police in the Kitchen’ are about policing, which tells us how moral we ought to be, the rights of tribal people, and what we should or should not eat. 

The show is a sort of homecoming for Reji, who had studied at the now-defunct art school on the campus before moving to MS University, Baroda, to study Fine Arts. The works on show, chosen from private collections and galleries, span the period from his undergraduate to the present. “The show was planned over an extremely short two-month period,” he says.

Reji has shown his work at the first Kochi Muziris Biennale, besides at Art Basel, Hong Kong Art Fair, Taipei Art fair and shows in art galleries such as The Guild, Mumbai, Nature Morte, Delhi, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi etc.  

“I have been able to trace my journey [as an artist]. For example how I used colour or an image and how I do it now. I can see myself mature as an artist. My palette too has been shifting. It is now based on what I want to communicate,” adds the Baroda-based artist. He confesses to moving away from a signature style towards one that “supports” the subject of the painting.    

A self-evaluation is inevitable when faced with one’s work over decades. “I am happy that I have been able to work and paint for this long!” 

The exhibition on at Kerala Museum, Kochi, concludes on April 5.