The aroma of light

An amorphous abundance unfolds into spatialized ensemble. The solids have liquefied into light, they have almost become gaseous and the print has given them the substance back. The alchemy of light deconstructs not only the object, but the construct of photographic image is also under scrutiny. Before each of Nikhil Bhandari’s pictures invite a viewer’s passions with their theatrical appeal, a glace at the installation view at the gallery might generate critical questions: what is it that we are looking at? How do we classify it? Is the blur a metaphor for the paradigm shifts in visual art?

Non-representative photography has evolved from the early twentieth century with the photographers’ zeal to use the medium ‘by itself’. The experiments by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, or the ‘Vortographs’ by Alvin Coburn are a case in point. However, the interpretations of the ‘non-representational’ within photography have changed over time, as pictorial photography asserted itself vis-à-vis the documentary mode. The fine example from India would be the photographs by Ashwin Mehta. Mehta’s pictures record a decipherable image, but inherit suggestions and allegories that might differ from the image. Thus, the ‘subject’ is not to be represented per se. Another stream in ‘non-representative photography’ grew in a rather academic way, and intended either to render the object unidentifiable by accentuating and enlarging the details, or to conceal the image by the use of filters and effects.

Nikhil Bhandari’s technique revisits the notion of integrity of the equipment to picture-making process. His use of multiple lights, slide-projections and his emphasis on recording the image as reflected on a mirror-like surface, are a priori to his moment of clicking. It might sound classicist to stay with a non-digital camera, but Nikhil does it, as if to retain the purity of the recorded picture against the altered results. Nikhil’s studio-setting might remind of the three mirrors that Coburn had placed between his subject and his camera. Nikhil does not use mirrors, but has a flexible surface that would reflect but not reveal the reflection.

The theatricality that the colours carry, can be traced back to Nikhil’s studio where the ‘stills’ are recorded from a multitude of movements. Nikhil makes his models move and sometimes respond to music through their movements, he makes his assistant move the mirror-like surface, and then he moves around, to click. The rehearsals for this theatre of still and movement begins with note-making about lights. Nikhil thoughtfully chooses from among the repertoire of his colour transparencies for projections, and apprehends which kind of lights would work in tandem or contrast with the chosen slide projection. By then, a seasoned photographer would almost visualize the result. Nikhil deconstructs this cause and effect relationship with the element of movement. Movement thus becomes the first step towards ‘emancipation’ of light as attempted by Nikhil.

Where do the lights take us, then?

One might also ask, where do the lights take themselves? Do they make pretty pictures or do they tell something more. While the notion of soothing/enchanting visuals is best left to individual taste, we move on the cerebral appeal of the pictures. They look like computer-generated images which they are certainly not. The works remind us of the historical experiments in non-representative photography but the present work is independent. The pictures reveal or suggest some existence of body or object but the revelation is incidental.

The fluid rules over the form in Nikhil’s pictures. The prints confront us as if we read a map of a constantly changing geography. Though the amorphous movements, islands and seas of colour keep their pliability alive. Within the forms, tectonic plates of the known keep colliding with the unknown.

One might contemplate abstraction in India vis-à-vis Nikhil’s present suite of pictures. Nikhil falls in line with his predecessors in so far as the holistic approach to an image goes. He shares the spiritual instinct that lays a foundation for acceptance of non-image as an image. Yet, Nikhil is not an abstract expressionist, nor a constructivist. He differs from the two streams in Western history of modern art. At best, one could relate to the hedonism of Howard Hodgkin (or Bose Krishnamachari, in India) on one end and the ‘ruined abstraction’ of Gerhard Richter. While Richter ‘wipes’ the finished formalist, representative work and ‘ruins’ it till abstraction is attained, Nikhil’s reference to a bodily form and its negation is akin to Richter. I see no links in Hodgkin and Nikhil except the formal similarity of an animated, moving form.

As we let the pictures work upon us and as their interpretations or vibes grow on us, we begin thinking differently. At once, we the suggestion of foetal fluids and maybe a female body, after which one might think of the vanishing female re-foetesizing herself. The magic of such individual semantics, as the pictures make way for their generative grammar. We see the aesthetics of abundance amorphosized in ascetic acts of light. We no longer see the pictures, we inhale them, as if they contain the aroma of their light.

-- Abhijeet Tamhane,
Mumbai, August 2008.

The Artist as Historian

Vivan Sunderam is known for devising sense-making strategy through his art. His interventionist use of picked and collected material has revealed the artist's role as a social being and as a visual communicator and at times, a historian who asserts certain visuals. His recent show at Gallery Chemould, Mumbai, not only lived up to this reputation, but underlined the role of the artist-historian that Sunderam took.
Bad drawings for Dost, the title of the show, suggested some challenge to the taboos. Dost is affectionate than honourific, bad drawings should not be exhibited, and if at all one chooses to show them- one should not overtly say they are 'bad'… and so on. The 'Bad'ness of the drawings lied in their content, though. These were tracings from Bhupen Kakkar's various paintings and drawings. Given the extent of homophobia in the society we live in, the drawings were 'bad', notwithstanding their linear joy for a discerning viewer and their importance in the art-historical project. Avant-garde is often discarded as bad, and Sunderam's work skillfully challenged this tendency while underlining Bhupen's avant-gardist contribution . The skill was that of an orator: Sunderam's show was comparable, in ways, to an illustrated lecture that would assert how Bhupen's work negated the binaries in sex.
Sunderam had also employed the stitches and such other techniques that are conventionally not regarded as artists' technique. Every move that Sunderam made counted up to the impact. The use of the tracing paper itself, suggested the 'secondary' position that Sunderam would prefer to take vis-à-vis a great artist and his deceased dost, but it also provided the show with an allegory of the trace, the re-discovery. The use Graphite, (a material that is considered primary and is so intimate to the paper or canvas that many a time it gets invisible by the later layering of colour), was equally suggestive.
The Artist-historian's role that Sunderam played for 'dost', stressed the importance of the subjective, the partisan and alternative approach to history itself. While there is little doubt that the drawings Sunderam chose to work with, will be counted as Bhupen Kakkar's contribution, the show will be remembered for the historical assertions while not being assertive in a direct way. The show was a curious mix of non-assertive and instisting use of signifiers that summed up to the interventionist strategy Sundaram used.
-- Abhijeet Tamhane