Ikon, Birmingham
This six-decade survey is a riot of biomorphic blobs, candy-coloured galaxies and cosmic spectacle – but the quieter works pack the biggest punch
The work of Balraj Khanna will be familiar to many residents of Birmingham, whether they know it or not. Displayed on the safety curtain at the Hippodrome, his monumental painting Astral Dance has prepared countless theatregoers for the evening’s performance since it was completed in 2001. Khanna produced a dreamlike vision of biomorphic forms – pulsing blobs, splayed fingers, blooming whorls – set against variegated orange hues. Its delightful colours and benign shapes conjure a palpable sense of magic and wonder, while also containing little that might disturb the audience’s mind beyond the curtain’s raising.
This show is likewise one of flash and spectacle. The introductory text makes a point of the fact that, having been born in Punjab in 1939, Khanna witnessed the 1947 partition of India as a young boy. But if that generational trauma influenced his work as an artist, then it is apparent only in a turning away from horror towards the consolations of fantasy. He moved to London in 1962, just in time for the invention of sex (in Philip Larkin’s account), but the social revolutions of the era are no more obvious. Instead, his practice as an artist (and a picaresque novelist) summons more innocent memories: the astonishments of street entertainment and the glamorous artifice of theatre.
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