An uncharacteristic spurt of energy saw me visiting three galleries in Colaba last week. The way was long, the day was hot, but I remained undaunted. I went, I saw, I came away impressed. Both with myself, and with the shows.
K.G. Subramanyan, on view at Art Musings (2nd- 30th August, 2010)
The first stop was Art Musings, which offered a quick glimpse of K.G. Subramanyan’s paintings. The show consisted of just a handful of works – but the bright colours, bold lines and play on planes immediately put one in mind of (what is now) instantly recognizable, old-school Modernism. And while there were no catalogues or brochures available, the gallerist herself was warm, welcoming, and keen to talk about art and share her impressions of the artist. She was also nice enough to allow us to browse through her own collection of writings by, and on, K.G.
My acquaintance with K.G.’s influence on Indian art is very recent, which was a particularly compelling reason for me to view his work for myself. I recommend this show to anyone who is similarly inclined and equally uninformed – see a little, browse a little. I enjoyed the unexpected and friendly conversation, and it’s difficult to be anything but cheery in this compact, yellow-walled space. Go to get introduced to K.G. Subramanyan, and to whet your appetite for a closer and more revealing encounter.
Neha Choksi, on view at Project 88 (2nd – 28th August, 2010)
Intriguingly entitled ‘If Nothing Else, Just a Smile,’ Choski’s show is an enigmatic puzzle. Walking around the gallery, I felt like I had all the pieces at hand, but wasn’t quite sure about how they went together. Of course, it’s naïve and possibly even presumptuous to assume that artworks can be understood or interpreted in all their entirety, but it’s something most viewers (including myself) are guilty of attempting.
The show consisted of large format colour photographs of headstones and the nodes of amputated tree-limbs, all taken at a Los Angeles cemetery. Many photographs had smiling faces etched onto them. In addition to this, there were a few sculptures constituted of mattresses, tree stumps, flowers, as well as a video installation.
Cemeteries are, in and of themselves, interesting spaces – sites for mourning, grief, remembrance, poignancy, togetherness. But why make them the locus for a set of works? In an interview with TimeOut Mumbai, the artist says – “The first thing that a child sees when it is born and the first response that it gets from the world would be its mother smiling at it. If you have to talk about the history of happiness, you have to start from there….I don’t want to look at the cemetery as a place of mourning. I am interested in celebrating loss…I hope the viewers recognize the sense of levity and fun the pictures have.”
A mother’s smile as a child’s first response from the world? The history of happiness? Celebrating loss? Levity and fun? It would be easier to subscribe to this explanation of the works if the smiles in question were benign and innocent. They aren’t – they are leering, and when multiple faces are crowded together, as in the case of ‘Fledglings’ – even ghoulish. The closer one goes to the photographs, the more it becomes apparent that the smiles have been created through deliberate acts of vandalism – etching, scratching, ripping, tearing. ‘There, you fixed it,’ consists of a torn and ripped photograph that is put together with tape, smiley face more-or-less in place.
This deliberate juxtaposition of happiness and brutality is disconcerting. I think of the smiling faces as a grasping defence against the finality of loss, expressed in a pre-fabricated and accessible format – a self-imposed return to innocence. Which is possibly why I found ‘Remembering Mummy,’ – styled as a child’s quick scrawl of what her mother must look like, set against the backdrop of a tombstone – incredibly sad.
Maybe there is some macabre humour here. But amidst the sagging mattresses, wilting flowers, and cemetery graffiti, I couldn’t bring myself to smile. There is something else going on – questions being asked – and even though I couldn’t fully articulate these undercurrents, it is important that I felt compelled to try.
Priyanka Choudhary, on view at Gallery Maskara (2nd-22nd August 2010)
The short introduction to this show says that the artist is interested in a ‘pubic’ anxiety, and without claiming to know exactly what she meant when she used that word, it’s fair to say that ‘From Nul to Now’ is a show infused with tension.
The most striking thing about the all works – small, large and very large – is their astonishing tactility. Choudhary eschews paints, preferring to use plaster, clay, twigs, thorns, bark and nails instead. Looking at the works, then, is not so much a matter of seeing as of ‘feeling.’ It is a process of imagining and reacting to the texture of the work, of wondering how it would feel to touch them and hold them.
So at one level, the tension I speak of is a textural tension, born of the interplay of materials – canvasses that are slashed or studded, bark wrapped in muslin and embedded with nails. And the works have a beauty and delicacy which belies the coarseness of their constituent elements. My favourites include 2 long, twisted branches that are covered with an intricate arrangement of nails that immediately brings embroidery work to mind, and a set of 3 small baby-pink and white canvasses, two of which resemble little tissue covered sacs of nails.
And then there is a massive wood sculpture, entitled ‘Pubic,’ that looms over the gallery. Composed entirely of scaffolding-quality bamboo tied together with rope and the occasional plaster smear, it resembles nothing so much as an explosion in abeyance. This is a work with a palpable presence, and the tension one experiences with it is that of approach. How close does one go? Will it really stay intact? What if one of those pieces was to come undone and propel to the floor? It has been a long time since I have reacted to art viscerally, and it was nice to be reminded that under certain circumstances, I could. Another work that has a sense of its own space is a pockmarked canvas protruded by a fragile dry thorn bush. The canvas is deceptively ‘normal’ sized, until one realizes that one has to walk around it, rather than up to it. To go too close is to risk damage – not to oneself as much as the thorns.
So there is tension here, if not full-blown anxiety. And I will be going back to experience it all over again.
K.G. Subramanyan, on view at Art Musings (2nd- 30th August, 2010)
The first stop was Art Musings, which offered a quick glimpse of K.G. Subramanyan’s paintings. The show consisted of just a handful of works – but the bright colours, bold lines and play on planes immediately put one in mind of (what is now) instantly recognizable, old-school Modernism. And while there were no catalogues or brochures available, the gallerist herself was warm, welcoming, and keen to talk about art and share her impressions of the artist. She was also nice enough to allow us to browse through her own collection of writings by, and on, K.G.
My acquaintance with K.G.’s influence on Indian art is very recent, which was a particularly compelling reason for me to view his work for myself. I recommend this show to anyone who is similarly inclined and equally uninformed – see a little, browse a little. I enjoyed the unexpected and friendly conversation, and it’s difficult to be anything but cheery in this compact, yellow-walled space. Go to get introduced to K.G. Subramanyan, and to whet your appetite for a closer and more revealing encounter.
Neha Choksi, on view at Project 88 (2nd – 28th August, 2010)
Intriguingly entitled ‘If Nothing Else, Just a Smile,’ Choski’s show is an enigmatic puzzle. Walking around the gallery, I felt like I had all the pieces at hand, but wasn’t quite sure about how they went together. Of course, it’s naïve and possibly even presumptuous to assume that artworks can be understood or interpreted in all their entirety, but it’s something most viewers (including myself) are guilty of attempting.
The show consisted of large format colour photographs of headstones and the nodes of amputated tree-limbs, all taken at a Los Angeles cemetery. Many photographs had smiling faces etched onto them. In addition to this, there were a few sculptures constituted of mattresses, tree stumps, flowers, as well as a video installation.
Cemeteries are, in and of themselves, interesting spaces – sites for mourning, grief, remembrance, poignancy, togetherness. But why make them the locus for a set of works? In an interview with TimeOut Mumbai, the artist says – “The first thing that a child sees when it is born and the first response that it gets from the world would be its mother smiling at it. If you have to talk about the history of happiness, you have to start from there….I don’t want to look at the cemetery as a place of mourning. I am interested in celebrating loss…I hope the viewers recognize the sense of levity and fun the pictures have.”
A mother’s smile as a child’s first response from the world? The history of happiness? Celebrating loss? Levity and fun? It would be easier to subscribe to this explanation of the works if the smiles in question were benign and innocent. They aren’t – they are leering, and when multiple faces are crowded together, as in the case of ‘Fledglings’ – even ghoulish. The closer one goes to the photographs, the more it becomes apparent that the smiles have been created through deliberate acts of vandalism – etching, scratching, ripping, tearing. ‘There, you fixed it,’ consists of a torn and ripped photograph that is put together with tape, smiley face more-or-less in place.
This deliberate juxtaposition of happiness and brutality is disconcerting. I think of the smiling faces as a grasping defence against the finality of loss, expressed in a pre-fabricated and accessible format – a self-imposed return to innocence. Which is possibly why I found ‘Remembering Mummy,’ – styled as a child’s quick scrawl of what her mother must look like, set against the backdrop of a tombstone – incredibly sad.
Maybe there is some macabre humour here. But amidst the sagging mattresses, wilting flowers, and cemetery graffiti, I couldn’t bring myself to smile. There is something else going on – questions being asked – and even though I couldn’t fully articulate these undercurrents, it is important that I felt compelled to try.
Priyanka Choudhary, on view at Gallery Maskara (2nd-22nd August 2010)
The short introduction to this show says that the artist is interested in a ‘pubic’ anxiety, and without claiming to know exactly what she meant when she used that word, it’s fair to say that ‘From Nul to Now’ is a show infused with tension.
The most striking thing about the all works – small, large and very large – is their astonishing tactility. Choudhary eschews paints, preferring to use plaster, clay, twigs, thorns, bark and nails instead. Looking at the works, then, is not so much a matter of seeing as of ‘feeling.’ It is a process of imagining and reacting to the texture of the work, of wondering how it would feel to touch them and hold them.
So at one level, the tension I speak of is a textural tension, born of the interplay of materials – canvasses that are slashed or studded, bark wrapped in muslin and embedded with nails. And the works have a beauty and delicacy which belies the coarseness of their constituent elements. My favourites include 2 long, twisted branches that are covered with an intricate arrangement of nails that immediately brings embroidery work to mind, and a set of 3 small baby-pink and white canvasses, two of which resemble little tissue covered sacs of nails.
And then there is a massive wood sculpture, entitled ‘Pubic,’ that looms over the gallery. Composed entirely of scaffolding-quality bamboo tied together with rope and the occasional plaster smear, it resembles nothing so much as an explosion in abeyance. This is a work with a palpable presence, and the tension one experiences with it is that of approach. How close does one go? Will it really stay intact? What if one of those pieces was to come undone and propel to the floor? It has been a long time since I have reacted to art viscerally, and it was nice to be reminded that under certain circumstances, I could. Another work that has a sense of its own space is a pockmarked canvas protruded by a fragile dry thorn bush. The canvas is deceptively ‘normal’ sized, until one realizes that one has to walk around it, rather than up to it. To go too close is to risk damage – not to oneself as much as the thorns.
So there is tension here, if not full-blown anxiety. And I will be going back to experience it all over again.
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