A Rajeswara Rao
Born 1960.

Rajeswara Rao's displacement from Visakapatnam to Hyderabad was nothing less than 'hallucinating'. Contrary to the quite sea shores and beaches back home, the shanty rented studio in the narrow lanes of old Hyderabad among cloistered shacks of nut crackers, butchers, textile dyers, rickshaw pullers and over used public toilets provided infinite number of subjects that a contemporary painter could address. These shifts from place to place and different circumstances played a vital role in the making of Rajeswara's art.

He has always been involved with human activity. In the beginning, subtly weaving fragments of the seen newness, into intrinsic socio-cultural tapestries, of over crowded human activity in streets, situations and rooms of. The works are ever set against the socio-cultural backdrop with no room for nostalgia, forever banking on the present. Allowing subtle shifts of emotional quantum Rajeswara eventually, detaching from the complexity and rigor of creating 'balance', shedding surplus elements, his exception skill and fine artistry and redirecting his sensibilities to invest in intrinsic compartments of the human psyche, heightened by the dimensions offered by his choice of medium - acrylic on acrylic sheet and paper.

Rajeswara's work begin by attempting to describe the usual everyday activities - self conscious performative acts, exclusive mannerisms, commonly practiced by a highly influential and imitation worthy segment of people. These gestures and mannerisms that become a disjointed effort by the imitators transform into highly articulate and sophisticated effort to describe a world of intemperance - changing the sense of everydayness into expansive artistic and socio-cultural commentary and complex interpretive narratives.

Rajeswara as an audience to the presently changing socio cultural panorama of consumerism and explicit imitation draws inferences of subjugation of peoples 'self', bartering it away for the market worthy necessities. The rich imitate the west and the mass imitates the rich is a common norm. The corporate the high end products, the roller coaster fashion, the haute couture, the mushrooming malls and the foreign brands resonate offering a promise of entry into 'modernity' - snapped up by the nouveau riche resulting in an unusual trajectory.

What seems important in Rajeswara's work is the implication of satire and the effort to find pleasure in ones make over resulting in a dark humor. He draws a thin yet sturdy line between sheer pleasure and pain.

The artist lives and works in Hyderabad.