By Britt Beedenbender - Barnstable Patriot - Barnstable,MA,USA
Tuesday, October 3, 2006
In a departure from her colorful and at times abstract creations, British artist Kulvinder Kaur Dhew has journeyed into the realm of black and white in a series of 24 charcoal drawings on view in the exhibition “Tempest” at the Cotuit Center for the Arts.
Created over the past eight months from a pastiche of images collected from her visual memory and photographs, this exhibition offers a refreshing perspective on nature that simultaneously entices and terrifies. Dhew’s drawings invite contemplation, not the passive kind that is invoked by a twilight marsh scene but instead one that actively engages and confronts the viewer.
These energized compositions call upon the elemental forces of nature, occurring were wind and earth meet. At the point of connection a churning maelstrom is sparked resulting in swirling winds whose velocity creates a vortex capable of unrelenting destruction. Through studying the atmospheric qualities of storms in an almost “snap-shot like” fashion, Dhew creates vibrant metaphors for “the human condition” and “the turbulent times in which we live.”
As she writes, “It is the terrible beauty of the storm,” that duality between seduction and destruction, that appeals to Dhew. “They become traces of my reactions to the times we live in…and while they are emotional they are very conceptual.”
Her tornadoes, in part, “represent the whirling dervishes,” the initiates of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam, who whirl for days and believe that the beauty of God can be seen within the dynamics of nature.
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