Sudhir Patwardhan and Gieve Patel's show in Mumbai was a preview, before it went to Bose Pacia Gallery, New York. This Doctor duo is known to Mumbai for their friendship that, local papers tell us, is 31 years old now. Their journeys are similar, which began with the painters' role of social observer. Since then, both have come a long way. While Patwardhan addresses issues of human behaviour and its complexities, Patel interrogates the response to violence and delves into realms of the unseen.
For the show, Patel encapsulated his work through the last one and a half decade, seeking the trajectories of unforeseen violence and the suffering that ensues it, his famous well series and the joys of unseen visual, and the found (an in found objects) visual memories of a street that profusely presents the strengths and weaknesses of urban life.
Patwardhan, on the other hand, chose to show his new suite of paintings that introspected an artists life in his studio. This was a visual critique of the Abstractionist, Realist, Expressionist and Eclectic tendencies that make the studio breathe. What looks like Patwadhan's strategy, is to render the inner space of the studio in a neutral way, but to juxtapose this with the outer spaces of the studios. Thus, the elderly abstractionist ('as you grow old; you tend more to feel the inherent abstractions', said the Guru of Indian Abstraction, Shankar Palsikar), looks beyond an unfinished painting, his retired look suggesting that the painting on his isle, the one with black lines on white, might be complete now. At the same time, gay-coloured buildings, all devoid of any heed to the notions of balance and proportion, can be seen as if they are coming down from the studio window, encroaching the studio space. A realist's studio is visited by his wife, while down there... somewhere in his memory, it is his mother sitting out of their family home. This work shows a painting within a painting, a scene from the window, and a dreamy memory... the three facets of reality (observed, painted and remembered) meet with the 'present' : the 'usual' visit of the painter's wife.
Patwardhan's narratives take a self-critical turn in the eclectic painter's studio. Here, he questions the notions of history and the present, the lineage that an artist refers to, and goes on to ask, what binds the so-called eclectics.
This critical approach in the recent work does not mean Patwardhan has grown old, though! The Mumbai floods still invite him to sketch and paint. He still renders a woman at the electricity-billing counter, in the 'Mexican muralist' way, and the agitations for a basic necessity called 'light' make their impact on a veiwer who knows the local situation.
There are two ways to look at the show: one, take each work, think over it, or take the show as guesture of self-critique. While Patwardhan paints a studio-life series, Patel does it simply by installing a cross-section of his work!
The show is not big. It is just enough to arouse interest in these two practising Doctors, who paint. But it answers why they paint, why they attained repute of a prime painter, and, if one thinks well, why did they not abandon their 'primary' professions as radiologist and GP... why did they not distance themselves from the people they wanted to serve.
- Abhijeet Tamhane
