Art on a software palette: 14 techies who are fine artists too

One of the works at FYI

Okay, you are an IT guy who spends almost all your day and half the time after dusk in your cubicle in a bid to make your company’s client smile all the time. In the midst of all those highly intensive app development and design procedures, you have seldom found time to venture out and look at the world. Such is the pressure that your high paying job gives you.

A weekend retreat or a movie outing, once in a while, are your avenues of entertainment. Once that’s done, you drive back to your cubicle to ensure that you work hard and get paid handsomely.  Talk about art and you sneer, yelling, “where the heck is all the time for that?”

From the FYI exhibition
From the FYI exhibition

For those of you who nodded in agreement, the Durbar Hall Art Centre in Kochi had something different in store over the past week. If you were someone who walked in this week you would have been welcomed by a bunch of technology professionals – 14 of them in fact. What’s fine art to do with technology – you tend to ask.

For Your Information (FYI), an art exhibition of paintings and photographs by software technology professionals of Infopark-based Rapid Value Solutions, is what we are talking about. Interesting is the fact that a software company that employs 14 tech professionals who are also artists  – may be there could be more – functions in Kochi. It indeed is unique these days when people race against time to finish projects and designs.

From the FYI exhibition
From the FYI exhibition

The exhibition, which was organized as part of the social responsibility initiatives of Rapid Value Solutions, also  envisioned encouraging the artistic taste of IT professionals . The art exhibits by the 14 techie artists, including Melvin Thampi, Roy Anand, Anoop M, Sujit K S, Anugeeth T S, Saranya Ramanan, Hari Krishnan, Jibin Joseph, Amal Tomy, Mathukutty Xavier, Jijo Joseph, Sminu Joseph, Arun K A and Anjali Raveendran, has proved to be an eye opener to the general public and the professional artists who visited the exhibition venue. For, they had hitherto believed that techies are just techies who wouldn’t know a thing about art and its intricacies.

A glance through the woodcut works of Anugeeth T S, acrylic works of Melvin Thampi and Roy Anand, paintings by Saranya Ramanan and Anoop are much more than what you would expect. Ronie Anand’s acrylic portraits of legendary painters in their own distinct styles of painting, the water colour works of Sminu Joseph, computer graphics works of Jibin Joseph, and photography of Amal Tomy, Sujit K S, Mathukutty Xavier, Hari Krishnan and Jijo Joseph added to the charm.

FYI 6
Visitors at FYI

Rajesh Padinjaremadam, CEO & President, RapidValue Solutions explains the spirit behind this unique initiative, thus: “FYI exhibition is a unique initiative by a very talented set of artists, whose day job involves designing beautiful and highly functional software for mobile and web. We are sure this will be an inspiration to all creative talent in Kochi and in Kerala, and will provide an on-going platform for them to showcase their talent”.

A  Sustainable Development Program from the RapidValue stable, the exhibition of painting and photographs by techies, FYI was envisioned as an art exhibition primarily meant to showcase the artistic talent of techies in the Kochi Infopark environment. Dr. Gopalakrishnan J Prakash, Director – Human Resources, RapidValue Solutions, says the objective and vision was to showcase Art and Designs by RapidValue Designers to the fraternity of the Software Community in Kochi, and also to the fraternity of artists from various other avenues.

With the primary objective to serve as a platform for designers from all walks to interact and engage, FYI will be back with more tech professionals showcasing their talent next year. We hope to organize the event next year also, with select works from around 20 techie artists planned to be exhibited in 2016,” says Melvin Thampi, who is also the coordinator of the exhibition.