C.F. John is one of the most promising contemporary Indian artists coming out of Bangalore in Karnataka. His career so far has emphasised installations; the themes inspiring him born out of the natural resources of the land and the indigenous cultures of South India. In 2003 John executed his largest installation yet, involving the revitalisation of a 30ft wide, 35ft deep, disused well a few miles out of Bangalore. Prompted by discussion with people living in its vicinity and those who had once used it, John directed artist explorations and performance in the well, decrypting a space that in its present vacuum spoke volumes. In 2007 The Noble Sage showed a series of canvas paintings that described his aim to capture the grey area between that that you can see is believably real/physical for a human form, that that is actually possible of a body under force, speed, gravity or through human strength and, lastly,that that is possible of a human subject when his or her three-dimensional action is transformed into a two-dimensional image. For this series, 'Four Corners of a Line' (2006), John worked with an American performance artist, suspending her from the roof of his balcony by trapeze-like constructions or else responding to photographs taken remotely in the USA. The results are astonishing moments of unusual physical calm and motion arrested on the canvas. John is adamant about his methodology being constrained to the real limits of the body both that of his model and that of his own. Elucidating, he says: "If I was to say that you could lay horizontal across my open palms, you would say that it is impossible. But, if you were to run and jump flatly across my palms, for just one singular moment, the impossibly unrealistic is made natural and believable. It is this moment that I try to capture on the canvas." The intrigue for the viewer has an X, Y and Z visual axis: we learn that the abstract, colour renderings about the model are the microcosm of her clothes and skin, the atomic make-up of her fabric of existence moving before our eyes. We look into the image imaginatively at the same time as standing back from it, objectively understanding the human pose.
In his new series of works acquired by The Noble Sage titled 'Still. Silent.' (2008), John again plays with preconceptions of surfaces. C.F. Johns work subverts our participation as a viewer as much as he subverts the action within his paintings.
