Swan Song by Priyesh Trivedi
40 x 30 inches, Oil on canvas
What would you do when the world is burning and you’re on the banks of the Hades?
If you were among artist Priyesh T’s posse of aadarsh (ideal) boys and girls, you’d be hitting the bottle and rolling joints aboard a baroque, swan-shaped boat wading through the black river of death, barrels of toxic waste floating by lazily. Underneath an idyllic blue sky, these four children are akin to the four Horsemen of the punk-rock apocalypse.
Priyesh is a self-taught visual artist and designer from Bombay whose Aadarsh Balak (‘ideal boy’ in Hindi) series of paintings and illustrations first became a viral sensation in the mid-2010s, while he was still in his twenties. The dead-eyed children in these paintings resemble the flat-composition ‘Ideal Boy/Girl’ charts and posters once ubiquitous in Indian schools in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
In Priyesh’s rendering, these children indulge in wanton acts of substance abuse, vandalism, arson and general upheaval. Their nihilism not only challenges the status quo, it forces the grown-ups around them to re-examine their own relationship with society.
Swan Song, a part of recent group exhibitions at Method galleries in Mumbai and Delhi, deploys these merry pranksters on an apocalyptic mission with enthralling results.
...What would you do when the world is burning and you’re on the banks of the Hades?
If you were among artist Priyesh T’s posse of aadarsh (ideal) boys and girls, you’d be hitting the bottle and rolling joints aboard a baroque, swan-shaped boat wading through the black river of death, barrels of toxic waste floating by lazily. Underneath an idyllic blue sky, these four children are akin to the four Horsemen of the punk-rock apocalypse.
Priyesh is a self-taught visual artist and designer from Bombay whose Aadarsh Balak (‘ideal boy’ in Hindi) series of paintings and illustrations first became a viral sensation in the mid-2010s, while he was still in his twenties. The dead-eyed children in these paintings resemble the flat-composition ‘Ideal Boy/Girl’ charts and posters once ubiquitous in Indian schools in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
In Priyesh’s rendering, these children indulge in wanton acts of substance abuse, vandalism, arson and general upheaval. Their nihilism not only challenges the status quo, it forces the grown-ups around them to re-examine their own relationship with society.
Swan Song, a part of recent group exhibitions at Method galleries in Mumbai and Delhi, deploys these merry pranksters on an apocalyptic mission with enthralling results.