Ravi Shukla/ aka Bill Beso

(This image is probably the size of a penny... )

My very good friend Lisa Kehler, who now lives with her family on the East coast, curated an exhibition of Ravi Shukla's illustrations in Winnipeg at the Semai Gallery (run by Takashi Iwasaki who is represented at Le Gallery).

Titled "Bombs & Wombs," Lisa had installed Ravi Shukla's (also known as Bill Beso) very fine, detailed illustrations along the long and skinny hallway which makes up Semai, meaning 'narrow' in Japanese. A perfect space for exhibiting these teensy drawings made up of tiny, metamorphic creatures.

From the exhibition statement: His creations vary from the simplest of figures to the most mystical and fantastic beast-like forms. It is Shukla's use of space within the border of each surface, perhaps best described by Semai Gallery Director Takashi Iwasaki as the "anti-gravitational aspect" that reinforces each drawing's ability to urge the viewer to recall those youthful memories of awesome possibilities. We are unable to decipher the exact orientation of who is climbing and who is falling; or even what is what is up and what is down.

These hybrid, grotesque little beasts are closely related to ideas of transmorphism and are nearly illustrative versions of Odilon Redon's strange beings. One of my past profs had been researching transmorphism in relation to the spiritual. She seamed together these brilliant links between Redon, Galle- namely his tadpole vase and other French symbolists. This, of course, made me love these drawings even more and now I have a wonderful shadowbox installed in my living room!