Unlikely Logos…

Intrigue is at the core of Justin Ponmany’s paintings. He has, over a period of last five years, gradually made them more and more hologramatic, a process rarely used by an Indian painter. Rarity of technique is not the end, though. It is the beginning for having an artist’s take on the medium commonly used to denote authenticity of a product or document. The debate on authorship is central to Justin’s work as he uses his canvas with searched (as against, found) photographic images and explores them with juxtaposition of other images or text.
The imagery in Justin’s recent body of work, for example, ranged from colonial monuments, the moment of childbirth, a dog… all supported with repetition of a word or two. The words, coupled with pictures, definitely had an invitation to the viewer to solve her/his intrigue, or at least to be at ease with the intrigue level you have.
Ask Justin about the efficacy of holograms and he would say he wants the technique because he intends to make his work look like ‘unlikely logos reflecting the dreams and despairs of today’ a word that intrigues you more! Justin’s holograms were supported by some drawings on graph-paper, and all the drawings had one form: that of Swastika. His canvases, too, showed the same, somewhat disturbing form beneath (or over?) the images. The graph-paper drawings were simple, they played with Swastika as if it were a mascot that tries to illustrate the words like ‘climb’. They almost had a childlike charm, and their adherence to the plotted points reminded of Rangoli designs, but central to them was a Swastika: a sign that has been downgraded in Europe to denote a politically incorrect ideology. Also within the contemporary Indian political-cultural practice, Swantika seems to be hijacked by the Hinduist ideology. The cultural construct of Swastika deserves a righteous subversion, a resurrection of sorts, to bring back the sign into its semiotic realm and then to attempt a new meaning. Justin’s drawings on graph paper did show signs of re-claiming the Swastika to a larger semiotics. His use of the same drawings as juxtaposed images on hologram-canvas challenged the known patterns of juxtaposition, and suggested a meaning elsewhere.

A logo has readability. It almost impersonates what it stands for. Justin’s logos were unlikely, for they did not say what they meant. Intrigue remains intact. Nevertheless, his use and subversion of colonial and contemporary images did stand for dreams and despairs of a glocal mind.

- Abhijeet Tamhane.