First, the caveats: This post is an attempt to
make good on the commitment that I would engage more frequently with art and
that I would document that engagement. I have forgotten more than I remember
about all the shows discussed here. But having seen them, I still have
something - tentative, succinct, partially accurate or otherwise - to say.
Atul Dodiya: 'bako exists. imagine'
Chemould Prescott Road
10th September - 20th October, 2011
Atul Dodiya is almost impossible to dislike. He
is intelligent, sensitive, talented, willing to experiment, but also
self-deprecating, humorous and approachable. A critic's artist, a collector's
artist and a viewer's artist.
bako exists. imagine was one more in a long line
of successful shows for Dodiya. It covered familiar ground but was also
animated by ongoing personal concerns. There were cabinets jam-packed with
references, almost like puzzles waiting to be put together; elements of
autobiography; a recognizable visual style. There were also illustrations of Gujarati
poet Labhshanker Thacker's fictions in which a young boy called Bako dreams of
Mahatma Gandhi, fondly referred to as Bapu. There was something surreal about
these visuals - renderings of renderings - and they weren't easy to navigate.
The viewer felt removed, twice-over. But then, so too was Dodiya, who was examining
his inner landscape as refracted through Thacker's work. The whole show was
oddly discomfiting, but maybe that is to be expected when a real-world artist sets
out to explore a fictional character's dreams of a defining historical figure.
Balaji Ponna: 'Looking is not Seeing'
The Guild, Mumbai
September 8th - October 3rd, 2011
This was ostensibly a show about sub-text, in
which words would intervene between the viewer and the work - creating a
momentary disconnection, but ultimately framing the audience's interpretation
of the work. In foregrounding sub-text, an artist essentially calls on the
viewer to be conscious and aware of his or her responses, to look out for cues
and contradictions. When a show hinges on semantics
it's important that neither the words nor the work are literal. They
cannot stand in for each other, they have to create space for
(mis)interpretation.
But Balaji Ponna's works were the kind that left
no room for doubt - either about his opinions or the intended meaning of the
painting/sculpture/installation. One example would be paver blocks embossed
with forms of sleeping men, meant to represent urban India's burgeoning homeless
population. The work was entitled 'New Designs for our Country's Pavements.'
When the substance is this apparent and overt, the sub-text is rendered irrelevant.
Sudhir Patwardhan (Curator): The Art of Drawing
The Guild, Mumbai
October 2011
Drawing is the foundation for artistic skill.
Most art students spend hours sketching, diligently seeking out scenes, subjects,
angles, perspectives. Drawings also illustrate art-making, telling us where an
artist comes from, how he sees, and why he ends up going where he does with his
work. Drawings and scribbles are fascinating, and museums abroad mount special
exhibitions dedicated to them. But they have fallen sadly out of fashion, particularly
in Bombay's contemporary art 'scene.'
I must confess that I was happy just to see drawings
in a gallery. There's something reassuring about pen and ink, just as there is
something reassuring about making things with one's hands after hours spent
tapping away at a keyboard or moving a mouse.
Because drawings are so intimately linked to an
artist's process, it goes without saying that all drawings are different and
that some work better than others. Gieve Patel's clouds, for instance, were ruminations.
Sudhir Patwardhan's views of a street were definite but not beautiful
- part of an exercise. Krishan Khanna's and Tushar Joag's sketches were
cohesive, almost complete; others dream-like and disjointed. Whether these drawings succeeded as works depended
almost entirely on how interested the viewer was in the artistic process, and
what kind of process he sympathized with.
Yardena Kurulkar: 'Transcience'
Gallery BMB
11th August - 7th September, 2011
Death and Life are part of a single cycle, each
is meaningless without the other. It's interesting that we prefer to think of
them as being distinct, apart: life is impermanent, uncertain, precious; death
is the given we prefer not to contemplate. These were Kurulkar's concerns: not
unique, but definitely weighty. In juxtaposing death and life, she had given
herself the opportunity to convey something important and significant.
Unfortunately, Kurulkar's works seemed less about
exploring these juxtapositions and more about describing decay. Mottled heads
and limbs, rotting bodies; black lines fading into whiteness and then
nothingness - this was a show that emphatically reminded its viewers that not
only is death inevitable, it also leaves us looking rather the worse for wear.
Sheeba Chhachhi: 'Luminarium: A Prelude'
Volte
13th June - 1st August 2011
Sheeba Chhacchi's works glowed. Sophisticated,
complex, layered, drawing on current affairs, myth and history, they were a
delight to decode. Looking back, I realize that what was most interesting about
her show was not the visual detail nor the multiple references or even the
technology - it was the pace of the installations.
Each installation moved at a certain speed, and
in order to 'see' and 'understand,' viewers had to make associations and align
themselves to the movement of birds across a landscape. This reorientation,
facilitated by a specially designed soundtrack, yielded its own rewards. People
slowed down, they looked closely, they took their time. There really was no
other way to satisfactorily experience Chhachhi's show. It takes a special kind
of skill and attention to detail to merit that kind of effort. Chhachhi's
success lay in getting viewers to look and linger.
