By Jugneeta Sudan

Artist Julio D’ Souza has rendered the Last Supper many times in the last 13 years. When I talked to him he said, “Irrespective of how many I have painted, when I set out to paint again, for me, it’s One Last Supper”

Every-time. Without exception. 

The magnetic pull is the metaphor in the painting, a family/community coming together to partake of a meal at the dining table. A masterpiece embedding the dance of ‘Light & Shadow’, the polarities are palpable. The light is holy and shadow looms large. Besides, dark energies like jealousy, competition, betrayal and revenge too are seated at the table. Jesus is portrayed in flesh & blood, one with the men. Jesus is fully aware he will be indicted and crucified. Portraiture by the artist conveys the marks of his trauma and wounds.  Each face mirrors the affects of the dark energies, in the process getting distorted. Teeth & eyes are vocal, accentuating the searing atmosphere. Stretched by inner propulsions, bodies are folded wrong. Complexity abounds at tandem with emotional charge in the room.

For the artist, each person at the table is a microcosm, backed by long lineage, belief systems and unique consciousness. He is well aware of the distinctions and yet for him it is one face of humanity encompassing duality. His execution delineates a monstrous surreal world of closed egos and private hells. The work is complex, operates at different levels, but culminates in compositional unity. His forms relate to the human image, yet are complete distortion of it, unwavering in focus to get to the reality behind the images. With meticulous precision Julio gives form and shape to the sensations, instincts and those contorting invisible forces coursing through material unity of body.

In a Souzaesque vocabulary, the artist succeeds in delivering his visual shock by subverting the figures, yet retaining the representation of man-made arte-facts. The distorted faces hit the nervous system strongly, leaving a strong imprint, not easily forgotten. The imagination stretches birthing 13 personae, distinct from each other, and the whole feat is repeated with every attempt, without recycling older patterns. The composition is distinctive, ever changing, acquiring newer angles, in a bid to question monocular narratives. Recurring series traverses a long historical path, birthing, rebirthing the theme, making it relevant to present times.

The dark colors of the background lend a grotesque and nightmarish tone to the painting. If one simulates a dark photography room, another is eerie blackness lighted up by white/yellow popped pupils reflecting off each other. Bodies are pudgy and stunted, later twisted and elongated. Mostly these are hirsute men, but nothing goes missing in variations of baldness too. The white in the faces and background is not acrylic but paper morphing into forms when worked on by lines of different shapes and sizes.

Inspired by Dali, Picasso and Souza equally, the artist is led by his soul and may begin a composition with fleshing a cup on a table. Working organically the artwork expands in various directions. The particularity of his artworks is embedded in a context of the masterful renditions of the theme through history. If his thought process gets disrupted for any reason, he abandons the work midway, and may begin another one from scratch. Mundane ritual of having a meal, of coming together of human beings on a table or a room is impregnated by numerous possibilities which never fail to inspire the artist. He despairs that in contemporary times family does not come together at the dining table to savor a meal and he recreates what has gone missing. But immense possibility of synergy must be sustained at all costs, not crucified at the altar of ego consciousness. The artist has work to do, ceaseless resurrection of the metaphor in the painting.

All images are copyright of Julio D’Souza.

Jugneeta Sudan is our art editor.