Sreeraj Gopinathan

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Sreeraj Gopinathan (born 20 May 1969 in Kollam, India) is a German contemporary artist of Indian descent. His work is characterized by its interdisciplinarity and dominated in particular by projects based on environmental and climate-relevant concepts.

Life and work

The experiences of childhood in a traditional healer family and in the nature-rich environment of the coastal region of Kerala were decisive for Gopinathan's development.

For the first artistic experiments, he used natural materials and paper, which he combined with cooked rice as an adhesive in order to make plastic forms.

Often he drew or painted portraits of acquaintances from the neighbourhood but also of famous personalities. He preferred to choose older people, whose facial features reflected their past lives. Another interest in his youth was the discovery of the diversity of flavours and the use of spices in the cuisine of South India.

From 1987 to 1992, he studied painting at the Raja Ravi Varma College of Fine Arts in Mavelikkara. The few resources at his disposal limited his beginnings to drawing and painting, in which he liked to capture human faces and natural structures. By combining the two, he developed his own style. In 1989 and 1993, he participated in the annual exhibition of the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi, a cultural organization of the government of Kerala, and won the Annual State Award for Painting in 1993.

The enthusiasm for the humanistic and nature-bound life's work of the Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore led Gopinathan to Santiniketan. From 1993 to 1996, he studied painting at the Visva-Bharati University under the painter Suhas Roy and, in parallel, the French language under the writer Saraju Gita Banerjee. In 1993, he was awarded the scholarship of Visva-Bharati University, and in 1995, the National Scholarship of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, government of India.

In 1996, Gopinathan received the Bourse du Gouvernement Français. With the residence scholarship, he studied fine arts at the École supérieure of the Beaux-Arts du Mans in France. Benefiting from the new techniques, he began experimenting with new components such as photography, light art, and installation. This resulted in a series of three-dimensional light-integrated objects.

In 1998, he moved to the southern German city of Coburg. Making use of the experience gained during his employment at Landestheater Coburg, he added a new segment − performance − to his compositions of light, darkness, and space. Gopinathan integrated a time-bound action of the audience into the perception process. The first presentation of those contemplation rooms took place in 2000 in the Hanseatic city of Lemgo. In the following years, he exhibited more works from this series in Ebern (2002), Bedheim (2002), Bad Königshofen in Grabfeld (2002), and Munich (2003).

Awards

  • Annual State Award, Kerala Lalithakala Akademie, Government of Kerala, India, 1993
  • Scholarship, Kala-Bhavana, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India, 1993–1994
  • National Scholarship, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, 1995–1996
  • Boursier du gouvernement français, France, 1996–1997
  • Projektförderpreis, Kunstverein TARA art e.V., Bavaria, 2018

Solo exhibitions

  • 1995 The Waiting – Drawings and Mixedmedia 1994–1995, Kala-Bhavana, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, India
  • 1998 Sreeraj Gopinathan – Zeichnungen, Gemälde und Fotoarbeiten 1995–1997, Annette Falk Keramik, Hofheim in Unterfranken, Bavaria
  • 2002 Bilder, Objekte und Installationen von Sreeraj Gopinathan, Schloss Bedheim, Thuringia, sponsored by Thüringer Ministerium für Bildung, Jugend und Sport
  • 2003 Sreeraj Gopinathan – Über dem Horizont, Lichtintegrierte Objekte, Bilder, Zeichnungen, Galerie des Lehr- und Forschungsinstitutes DAP e.V., Munich, Bavaria, sponsored by the City of Coburg and by the art association TARA art e.V.