"Zen Whispers" | The Buddha within
To the artist/mendicant, this book of thoughts is not a flashback, but a culling of statements, a representation of his understanding of art/life and finding the Buddha within. The book, Traversing Through Zen Whispers, replete with paintings and sculptures from different periods of Gupta’s artistic endeavours, covers works selected from his monumental landscapes series, the wave scene series, his flower series, which leads to a deep understanding of his artistic developments during the past 25 years for art audiences and readers of poetic intensity alike.
In a book that has been treated and designed like a Zen masterpiece — full of pauses and spaces, we glimpse Gupta as an artist with thorough knowledge of the past and the present, the East and the West. Divided into chapters of assonance and allusion it is like going beyond the senses, beyond the colours.
Contemporary awareness Gupta is well versed and experienced in the fascinations of Eastern and Western art. He gradually develops his own artistic language by infusing Chinese contexts with contemporary awareness. This distinctive style gains him critical acclaim and we look at wordscapes in new dimensions.
The antiquity in Gupta’s paintings echoes the monumentality of inner realms, giving viewers the impression that they are not the works of a contemporary artist but a man who straddles many realms. After studying them meticulously, one will, however, notice that the artist deliberately breaks away from the practice of contemporary art. He remains unchanged, one of the qualities Eastern philosophy teaches when facing the rapidly changing world. His words are majestic and yet delicate. Underneath his meticulous thoughts, which portray a discipline inherited from tradition, ingenious experiments can be found. The synergy created by his seamless intertwining of tradition and the avant-garde is indeed unique, both in his words as well as his paintings. Fantasies on paper
After reading a few pages, it is like glimpsing fantasies on paper and enchantments in the word—the splendour it denotes encompasses the idea of singing a canticle in colour while strokes swim in ink. You gain many moments in silence through the pages—you understand the traditional aesthetic concept of image—consciousness—and you realise that silence is the source of Gupta’s inspiration. His paintings are awash with the spirit of universal traditional cultures, and yet they go far beyond the conventional boundaries of ink/watercolour painting, exuding an aura that is both intimate and mysterious. They are both Indian and international, both traditional and contemporary.
This book tells us the tides are in our veins and nature’s peace flows around us. The sea is emotion incarnate and like Gupta, we have to look at the waves to know and understand the beauty of the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being.
Rhythmic resonance
These sinuous strokes of black and white resonance unveil the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it is everything that mirrors the waves and the soil and the sea. It tells us that in life, nature is aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement and we must be the protectors of the earth and its bounty. The rhythmic quality of the words resonates with the artist’s underlying statements, which cohabits magnificence and contemporary awareness.
Paper is the body of painting and fantasy is the soul; the inner spirit is the beauty of painting and enchantment is the passion. Fantasising the paper and enchanting the poetic passion is a process of refinement. All great works of art and books have one thing in common: they touch hearts universally, across time and territories. And when it treads into Zen terrain, it is as if they were bathing the audience in the clearest moonlight and freshest breeze, bringing them to contemplation with an indescribable charm. This book exemplifies all of this and more.
