A significant aspect of working method adopted by artist Rajesh p. s. is his starting with/ from the fragment.

This is particularly interesting because it is an unusual approach to a medium like wood, where the most common procedure would have been to begin with a large block of wood and to chip away to reach the required shape.

Instead the artist starts with the fragmented, and even while working towards a whole, retains the particularity of each piece. The work itself , then, rather than simply being a totalized whole, foregrounds the multiplicity of relations that produce the totality, every single piece of wood being absolutely necessary in the shaping of this architecture of contingent human figures.

A curatorial essay by Benoy.P.J to the show ‘From where we are now’ at Bombay Art Gallery (March-April, 2009) explains: “The present shape of this assemblage is not necessarily the only possible one: a different sculptor or even the same sculptor at a different time can give things a different shape. The Biblical subtext calls forth another memory of Babel, but that veritable triumph of unity is subjected to an act of defamiliarization by which the plenitude of languages is no more contemptible but necessary. It is not simply that this finished image makes a whole out of the contingent parts, but also and equally significantly, that the whole itself is subjected to claims and reshaping by the fragments, which throws light to their dismantability or possible deconstruction.

“The ironic title ‘Portrait of the architects who stood for their conqueror’, given to the group of figures corrodes the absolute authenticity  of  the ‘true faith’, to envision and work towards multiple spiritual and aesthetic pursuits, realization of which are never simply to be seen as pre-given but are the subject of intense deliberations-contemplation, conflicts and varied experiences.

‘A tale never loses in the telling’ and ‘Resurrection for a land of anticipation’ probe unexplored or greatly under-explored areas that Rajesh sets out to cruise through, playing with subtle inter-texts that give a particular resonance to the work. The resurrection of a figure from an inverted mushroom (bamboo basket?) signals the entry of a real persona into an imagined geography, or maybe that of an imagined being into a real world.