Rajan Krishnan

Exhibitions
1997-Gift for India, by SAHMAT,Ravindra Bhavan,New Delhi. 1998-Miniature Format Show,
Gallery Sans Tache,Mumbai.1997-Group show, by Kerala Lalithakala Akademi, Museum Gallery, Thiruvananthapuram. 1998-Substances on Black Moon,show with sculptor P.K.Surendran,
Galleria Mareechika, Ernakulam. 1999-An Album of Drawings and Paintings- works of ten painters of Kerala, Draavidia Art and Performance Gallery,Mattanchery. 2000-Chingamela,Kerala Kalapeetom, Kochi. 2001-State show, Kerala Lalithakala Akademi,Durbar Hall Art Centre,Ernakulam. 2002-Cross Currents, Daira Centre for Art and Culture, Hyderabad. 2002-An Album Drawings, Draavidia Art and Performance Centre, Fort Kochi. 2002-Tree Festival, Kashi Art Cafe, Fort Kochi. 2002-Monsoon Show,Daira Centre for Art andCulture, Hyderabad. 2003- Regional Art Exhibition, by Lalit Kala Akademi Regional Centre,Chennai in Hyderabad. 2003- ‘Remembering Bhupen’,Kashi Art Café, Fort kochi.

Camps
1993-Regional Painters’Camp, Kerala Lalithakala Akademi, Krishnapuram. 1997-Chitrashilpakala Sangamam,State art camp, Kerala Lalithakala Akademi,KILA,Thrissur. 1997-Chitrakala Sangamam,State painting camp, Kerala Lalithakala Akademi, KILA,Thrissur. 1998-K.C.S.Panikker Memorial Camp, Kerala Kalapeetom, Ernakulam.2001-Vishwa Kala Sangamam, by Kerala Kalapeetom, Ernakulam,Changampuzha Cultural Forum,Edappally and Stone Foundation, Thrissur, at Changampuzha Park,Edappally. 2002-Functional Art- camp by Lalit Kala Akademi Regional Centre,Chennai and K.F.I, Thatguni, Bangalore. 2003-Gathering, at Natanakairali, Irinjalakkuda, Thrissur, 2004 – The Oberoi Art Camp, Mumbai, organised by The Oberoi Group and Gallery Beyond.

Collections
Kerala Lalithakala Akademi/Kerala Kalagramam,Mahe/Changampuzha CulturalCentre, Edappally(Ernakulam)/Chetana Media Institute,Thrissur/and private collections in UK, Netherlands, Malta, Cyprus, Germany, Australia etc.

1987-90 Worked as graphic designer at Zeebras,Thrissur. 1997-2000 Associated with Gramadeepam-
in design and illustration-a monthly publication of Kerala Khadi Board. 1997-2000 Part time teacher at Sanket, Thiruvananthapuram. 1999-2000 Taught at College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram as guest lecturer. 2003-workshop on Space in Space ,at NIFT in Bangalore,along with C.K.Murali. Associates with Earth Society, Cochin Film Society, Me and You Performing Company,C.U.T.E, Chetana Media Institute, Kerala Bar Council News, Grasshopper, Jananeethi etc. since 2000.

Illustrations-Malayalam Books
Satchidanandante Kavithakal-poems, Sachidanandan
Ellarudeyum Bhoomi-poems, Savithri Antharjjanam
Collected Works of Vyloppilly Sreedhara Menon-poems
Pamban Paalathinum Munpu, short stories, C.V.Sreeraman
Mullakurmbarude Kalippattukal-Tribal songs,
compiled by Manu Jose.
Once upon a time-tales for children, Malayala Manorama.

2000- State Award for painting, Kerala Lalith Kala Akademi.

Rajan M. Krishnan was born 1967, in Thrissur district, Kerala. In 1989, he did a Bachelor’s in (Economics) from Calicut University, Kerala. After which he decided to follow his true calling and signed up for a B. F. A. (Painting) at the College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram. He completed his Bachelor’s in 1994, and thereon pursued a Master’s degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University, Baroda, which he completed in 1996. His first solo, Little Black Drawings, Mounted in 2004 at Kashi Art Gallery, Kochi was very well received.

One of the few Keralite artists who decided to go back home and work from there, Krishnan’s art has always been very sensitive to his environment, reflecting the socio-cultural ethos he inhabit and works from. Krishnan uses landscapes or elements from his immediate natural environment as his “principle protagonist” to express his innermost, aesthetic proclivities whether in celebration, homage or protest. While his earlier works were more realistic, featuring land/agriscapes typical of the topography in Kerala, of late however, his imagery has changed significantly. Krishnan works in a mode of realism that is significantly not based on images culled from the media or photographs made by the artist, his hyper-realism instead draws from memory, impressions, nostalgia and a sense of one’s shared inherited histories. Representing a “post-agriscape”, his later works are often, bleak, fragmentary visions of a dry, sterile landscape that seems to be an echo of a time which once buzzed with activity. “Instead of paddy, concrete and consumerist debris grow in these fields.” While his early experiences and memories of growing up in a remote village in Kerala have had a strong presence in his early works this slightly sentimental nostalgia, now seems to be giving way for a more hard hitting, cynicism that strives to document the sudden and overwhelming transitions occurring in his environment (that acts as a microcosm for the state of affairs in the country at large). These works make a clinical, examination, up close and unforgiving, at those “un-done landscapes” that he once held so dear.

The artists lives and works in Kerala.

ART IS HERE AND NOW, AND THIS VERY LIFE.

Solo show
2004 - Little black drawings , Kashi Art Gallery, Mattanchery, Kochi.