Art from a Keyhole

To keep it straight and simple, I must tell a short story about curiosity. This is a fiction cum reality where every child watches through the keyholes of doors. A closed-door ignites more curiosity in a child’s mind than an open one. It is a completely normal phenomenon for the human mind. We carry a strong desire to explore the things that are seemingly closed or out of our understanding.

There was a child who watches through the keyholes of a door to a closed house. In the search for something new, and something surprising; that child kept repeating his behavior in the search of something that doesn’t exist. Time passed, now he is a young adult but his curiosity to watch through the keyhole of that abandoned house is still unquenched. 

I never understood the reason behind that desire but with time he started losing his hope. After few years he left doing so. I don’t know either he found out what he was looking for or he simply gave up. 

Once I asked him about his behavior and he told me that he used to watch the shadows playing due to the sunlight penetrating through the window but with time those windows got blocked by the clouds of dust and webs. 

This story made me realize that there could be something inside us that keeps pushing us for the years to explore something that we generally ignore. His curiosity ignited a curiosity in me. It was a viral phenomenon. A curious person ignites a curiosity in others but does that same thing apply to fine art? Of course, it is only the matter of time and the right person. 

My desire to tell this story is to engage you in a much deeper conversation about whether a fine artist can create the same curiosity among the audience. In my opinion, it is completely true that an artist can create a spark of the desire for exploration in any person. How do I know? I know an artist- Vikash Kalra. 

He is one of the kinds who does not only watch through the keyhole of that abandoned house but also ignite the desire for exploration in his colleagues and audience. His arts are the dancing shadows that make him curious but there is something in his work that forces us to ask questions.

Curiosity and subjects with their expressions

If we look closely upon the art of Vikash we find that he got the curiosity to explore the subjects, media, and above all the attitude of the work. His constant exploration and curiosity to watch his art through his limited resources made him stand out from the others. The conversation with the artist, made us realize that there is something more mysterious and divine art is still hiding deep down in his heart. In that darkness, we find the sunlight which made that darkness into the dancing shadows. 

There is a form of desire in his works that inspire the young and appreciate the olds in such a way that it creates a sense of chaos in the mind. If you ever encountered his works then you may have looked upon the subjects and their expressions as well as their constant curiosity in the eyes. They are deliberate or naturally is the other topic but we cannot deny that he has that gut to convey the whole scene through the keyhole of an abandoned house. 

His art is still a dancing shadow and he is the child watching them through that keyhole. It is just a matter of time when his mind will be dusted enough to not be able to watch his work with the same curiosity as he watches them now. But there will be one thing that will prevail over time is that his art will keep questioning the sear existence of human nature and their curiosity. If we ignore it without knowing them then it will lead us to a sad reality where we cannot accept a curious artist’s vision and cannot able to question our questions.