Transgress Transgress is a group show featuring five young artists Vishnu Sasi, Clement Raj, Jibin Babu, Mani K Ayyappan, and Rishi Sasi. The academics, experiences, and inexperience of these artists mark their journey interesting. These five artists connect me through a common environment where they work as assisting artists to Mr. Ganesh Selvaraj. The inevitability of the inspiration seen visibly is what interests me to question them with What, Why, and how? This question arises from the inquiry I had myself as an art educator while observing the process of art-making among my students and artists. Wondering about their artwork, practices, and self, I interfere and knock on their reasonability. Vishnu Sasi approaches his artworks without pre-planning to avail of new experiences when identity becomes a sore question of the journey; What, Why, and How to become questions and thoughts, and his introspection. His Introspection is taken as a fixed time between the beginning and the end. He is trying to bring together the impact time and space have on creation. Vishnu’s thoughts and ideas lead to reconstruction, creatures are the creations of this time on his canvases. He is trying to practice breaking the horror of contingency and quest for something new. He experiments with found objects and materials that are comfortable to him. He says nothing is new but eventually the continuation of existence and reconstruction. By expressing he is being responsible, fulfilling duties, and trying to find answers by practicing art. Vishnu says trying gives new openings, learnings, and knowledge. Clement Raj is talking about the evolution of art that has happened over the years and he says that has happened with the materials being used to make artwork; a change to the material can only be caused by an artist and this will, in turn, affect the quality of the material. He is working towards highlighting the changes art has gone through with experimentation and trying to bring those in his artworks. Charcoal is the medium he used to work and trying to explore the possibilities revealed more objectives in his artwork. Clement is subjecting a person who likes to travel in the quest for something non-stop and conveys it with childlike curiosity and acknowledges he is also doing the same. His search is behind the expressions and he finds happiness and satisfaction in doing so, it is to express what he is. He feels everyone is the same but at different stages and is not confused about the medium he is most comfortable with. Mani K Ayyappan questions the viewers who see his artwork to reflect the self or to critique. The work intends to create a potential to believe everything in this universe is an illusion, for him, an artist has to be a human who shows compassion to all creatures. His technique is simple, but the concept keeps the momentum of thoughts and makes one react to his photographs. Ayyappan experiments with the man who does not react, his inner thoughts, fine art photography, light, and shadow. He attempts a lot of questions with the people who do not involve and react when others are in crisis. His works show people who do not know how to react. He also understands the fact that if he does not do it nothing is going to happen but to evaluate himself and express what he knows he started working with photographs portraying people with their faces covered. Ayyappan is attempting to explore the life he lives, his interest in photography, and the confidence he has in the medium. Jibin Babu is depicting his loneliness, the ants which disturbed him and his dreams recently, and the materials around him that motivated him to do the artwork. He tries to escape from the thoughts which deprive him of loneliness as he likes to be left alone. He admires the translucence of the color mixing with water as the inspiration to express his thoughts. Jibin metaphors his lonely thought and ants which keeps disturbing him. He thinks society has so much differentiation, everyone distinguishes himself from others and he is apart from the differentiation of others. He likes to do things he knows and engage himself with the life being lived and transfer his feelings and emotions which are broken. He uses wood varnish to spread the color and allows them time to bring in the results the same as his emotions are given time alone. Jibin avoids the crowd to create time for himself and also to overcome the fear of being avoided. Ants became the elements of his artwork from the dreams after listening to his grandparent's story and their belief in Hanuman. Once he dreamt of hanuman tickling him with his tail and while his mother woke him up, he had ants all over his body, and thus ants started co-existing with him. Jibin tried and tried ways to avoid them and then he started to work with ants. His surrealistic dreams of extremely huge objects or ants paved the way for creating ants with metal wires to make them feel stronger in his works. Rishi Sasi’s work of art permeates contradictions, the underlying darkness, and not worried about the political instability he is experiencing by quoting KTN Kottoor( a fictional protagonist by TP Rajeevan, a Malayalam novelist). He was entertained by some of the concerns and baseless individualism, and it reflects in his works he starts there with the conviction that not everyone can be an artist. His artworks are important going through three different stages, a problem(maybe political or not), a thought process, and solutions. Rishi tries to strike a fine balance in differences between the people he meets at his college and at the studio he works. He is not validating or proving his thoughts right but trying to believe it as his destiny and influence. He thinks that thought is what decides the medium of his work. He believes that a situation can only be fully or unambiguously present after a large number of factors and actions have taken place. Rishi believes his current circumstances are the byproduct of these contradictions, and an experiment to put together these works to make a conversation between him and the viewers. Curation and text by Sujeeth Kumar Sreekandan