Canvas is the sky...

Anjana Mehra’s journey to the recent show has been steady to the level of asceticism. She has been a painter whose sky is the canvas. A lateral thinker, Mehra traverses from personal to the political and vice-versa. The faceless people, the aircraft and the boats have long been under the aquamarine blue skies that she punctuates with white. So austere was her palette a decade ago that a typical Mehra painting was synonymous with luminous transparent hues of blues, red and a pale yellow. Yet, her work has always had a certain abundance: one might call it the abundance of engagement with the canvas.

This abundant engagement has now been transforming into the affluence of textures. Mehra has been experimenting with marble dust, and her works would assert and justify the need for this third dimension. The innocent evenness of snow, the somber grainy seawaters, the palpable plant or the rustic aircraft, all have tactility as an inherent, congenitally essential element.

The paintings maintain a balance of adjacent image and non-image portions through colour, texture and space. Thus, a coarse black nose-end of the aircraft meets luminous yellow, which in turn is countered by blue and latherous white. The balance is not only a visual trait. It magnifies the meaning, and contexualises the works. The ‘innocence’ of snow-clad mountains meets the uniformed soldiers with their guns hungry to quench enmities. It would be baseless criticism to dub this balance as mere ‘juxtapositions’. These overtures in contra-imaging can lead to an opera of human desires and nature’s powers.

Aircrafts in Mehra’s work become a vehicle of emotions. These machines might have been lauded for bringing the world closer about a century ago and they did change the meta-narrative of human mobility, but now they have lost their glory to other technologies. Yet they fly, move upward till the linear details of the terrains become invisible, and then move forward in the abstract realm of clouds. The motion is propelled, ordained, and must be controlled. For a person who looks down from the aircraft, perspectives change. The world looks small from up there, however big it might be.

The herds of humans might be propelled, politics does that. Changed perspectives enable us to ponder these popular propulsions. On the other hand, there is nature, as if waiting to be ordained and controlled, and so far humans have sustained nature, the controls have been minimal and case-by-case. The skies can best be painted in ulramarine blue, and the sunshine is at its best in luminous yellow. For the theatre of life, the lights and the sets can hardly be changed.

There are artists who think they are something more that just a participant observer of this theatre. Such artists paint the skies and the sunshine in the best possible colours they can think of. For such artists, canvas is the sky.

Perhaps, Anjana Mehra knows this!

-- Abhijeet Tamhane.

REVERSE DECONSTRUCTION

You had seen her as a bright art-student, who perfectly knew how to paint. And now you see her, after she recently won the Kashi Award for Visual Art (Cochin, Kerala) as an artist who rather knows what to paint and WHY.

Her decision to paint the obviousities was in offing even while she pursued her Masters studies. In the premier institute that the JJ School of Art in Mumbai is, the shackles of conservatism had just begun to fall down when Prajakta did her Masters in 2002. She was 'allowed' (if not encouraged) to go on with her plans to pimple-ify the 'portraits', thereby amplifying the nightmares of her gender and age. Not having a smooth skin is like being socially rejected in this world of TV screens dominated by anti-pimple ads... na?

From the class of 2002, Prajakta is here in 2005 to find her own class. She is, after all, a non-European, non-US, an Indian, a Maharastrian, a Mubaiite, from Borivli, and... well, from her home. If you look at that stack of newspapers tucked in the corner that's left even as the TV-showcase is kept to fit the place, you might not think it is HER home. But how could she photograph those so- very- private corners that get covered of done up when even the 'train-frieds' visit a mubai home?

Next door neighbours were soft targets. One watches prajakta's peering now from the home corners to the corners of common passages, shared balconies. Then, to the corners of her city... the dumping grounds by the Mumbai sea, in a far-off suburb.

The same peering, with the same amount of in(tro)spection had once looked at pimples, and had faced them as an aesthetic challenge to what remained the 'usual standard' for a college-girls facial skin. Now, the gaze is at home- neighbourhood- city.

The aesthetic challenge that these unattended yet unseen corners pose, gets a 'painterly' twist... one might call it a trick that Prajakta had learnt because (and/ or) despite being a student who knew how to paint.

Her choice of colours, at the works on display in Mumbai recently, looked like what a 'perfect' digital print ( a print that retains all the luminousity that you see on your monitor). At the same time, the use of brush, as an extension of hand, was discernible. The brushwork might not be noticeable, but the texural renderings, the Luc Tuymans way of gradations and remnants of a water-colour landscape painter's trait of leaving the paper-white blank at highlights, are visible. The perfection in colour and the fact that it is 'hand-made', or made by human intervention, adds drama of looking at a painting.

The 'drama in everyday' that the viewer has been knowing through the acts of genre painting and photographers' work ('a day in the life of'), gets a discursive twist in Prajakta's paintings. They invite the viewer to look at the well-intervened object, but put a bar that prohibits them to enjoy the object. Prajakta's work does not romanticise (like Vermeer did). The 'skill' of a human-interest photographer, to allure the moment sothat it lives its own life, is decidedly kept aside when Prajakta shoots those corners, before she takes to the acrylic colours and cainssein paper in her studio. She seems of the kind who wants her camera-notes typically imperfect.Then, to construct itself becomes an exercise in deconsrtruction. While it is arguable that most of the deconstructionist, post 1990s painters in India have been doing so, Prajakta deserves her cudos for making her 'Reverse Deconstrucion' memorable.

- Abhijeet Tamhane

Painters who critique themselves.

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

Footwork of Fantasy

Mumbai, for last ten years, has seen an emergence of alternative, subversive trends in art that enable and empower an artist to operate as a cultural practitioner of critical theory. Tushar Joag is not only a ‘product’ of this period, but also one of its many architects. Keeping aside his credentials as sculptor and installation artist, he switched his energies to conceive study-circles for familiarizing art-students with the socio-political realities and sometimes even to generate political action. Many artists would still know him as the man who, with his colleagues at the Open Circle, facilitated the visual art component at World Social Forum IV, Mumbai. Thus, Tushar typifies an artist who lives beyond the white cube of an art gallery.
Tushar’s recent show, “Willing Suspension” (at Gallery Chemould, August 5-26), marked his comeback to the white walls!
Alongwith a website representation of his larger project, the show had three kinds of works with different levels of intention : two canvases that pictured what a Mumbai local train is, with an instructional diagram of the footwork one has to make for a clever entry into a crowded train, a video (monoscreen) that explored the suburban rail traffic as a battleground of violence and peace in the city, and a sculptural installation that allured with fantasy-like innovations to board and commute on a train’s outer walls .

While the canvas and even the video were highly based on observed reality, the sculptural installation was an artist’s contribution. At once, it had overt ‘modernistic’ intentions to make human life easier, and post-modern subversive approach to what is being perceived as a ‘way of life’ …many a ‘Mubaiya public’ travel on the train’s outer walls with one foot on the window, but with a constant danger of life. Tushar’s attempt, through his deemed ‘devices’, was to eliminate that danger. Yet, by the very fact that this device is impractical and only a fantasy, Tushar had made his point. Instead of constructing some devices for a better world, he is into deconstruction of the reality that exists.

A more localized (no pun intended on the ‘local’ trains) observation of these works would help us to see the artist as a commuter himself, fighting and inescapable battle with a situation that his country, his city and his disposition as a suburban man. Where the agenda is to board a train and make oneself comfortable while in a train. What an accomplishment it is when MOST of the commuters meet this agenda, win the battle that they are forced to fight? Yes they do, even without the knowledge of their victory. Tushar’s work, then, has the value of artistic intervention that celebrates this unclaimed victory.

For the global audience that Tushar by now is familiar with, the work might infuse some insights in a local (pun sustained, not overruled!) life-situation. A fantasy as it may seem from a distance, a distance that we normally keep from the gallery walls, has already had entered the domain of reality through a clever footwork. The viewer no longer remains a distanced witness to what is shown. S/he is bound to be empowered to observe the ‘everyday’ of Mumbai closely.

- Abhijeet Tamhane, Mumbai, August, 2005

Old Maps for new mediations

What if a classic image, hitherto upheld as sublime, come to you as a mediated reality? Sachin Karne's recent works ^* do that, and open a pandora's box of questions. Questions about us, our world. The images Sachin chose to work upon, as a part of his 'Multiple' project, are Rembrandt's Nightwatch and Padmapani Bodhisattwa from Ajanta.

Art-/historical linkages

The reasons for choosing these images has a personal trajectory, of the experience Sachin had with two different cultures, in Netherlands and India. The images have been apparently become cultural emblems ,national tresures for the respective countries . Both images are potent with rasa : Shant Bodisattwa and Adbhuta Nightwath. While there might be hundred reasons to uphold their sublimity, Sachin Karne confronts these great works of art in atleast three ways :

1. using them as Multiples, a term synonymous with Andy Warhol, thereby subscribing to the anti-art and pop-art strands,
2. using them as backdrops for rather mundane images, and
3. yet rendering each of the multiple with hands, thereby bowing so much to the feudal dictates of 'love for art', that the exaggerated deference would mean discontent and dissent.

Mapping the (dis) content

Sachin has grown as an artist in Gujarat, the state which has made heady headlines in the recent past and thus has attained the dubious distinction of being a marvel of mediated realitiy .(The most recent 'reality' is that, Narendra Modi is now looked ONLY as a democratically-elected, constitutional head of a state!) However,
Sachin as artist-citizen seems to distance himself from the incoherent media headlines, to take a different vantage position that enables to think wider and deeper. In his process as a visual articulator, Sachin finds signifiers for introspection.
It is, then, a process of internalization of otherwise neutral signifiers, and disengagement of the already loaded ones. The warplanes sharing the skies with doves, soldiers posing for a photograph in a distant continent from their homes or the jubilant Babri demolition, the lotus flowers and a bowl of flames that override the lotus held by the lotus-handed Padmapani… do all of Sachin's images have an defined political context? Not so with the boy standing on a vertically dislocated springboard, circles of sex act, the self-portrait in a jigsaw with Warlol , a diver who jumps from one oblivion to another, children playing day-to-day games... are examples of 'non-loaded' signifiers who attain their roles only because the artist-protagonist wants them here.

While many artists have worked in the found/ searched images mode and celebrate/question the gamut of mediated reality, Sachin's aesthetic choices find a leverage with the larger world of unproved mediations and perceived realities. He would choose to render the flames in bowl in a sensual way, but the image of bound woman that makes a conceptual backdrop for the bowl may look poster-like. In showing us the museum object of a Buddha, Sachin would choose to underline the object, its metallic existence. The photographs, in his renderings, would conform to the Magritte- Foucault cannon of the 'depicted' pipe.

What happens, then to the 'Multiple' mediations of Nightwatch and Padmapani Bodhisattwa ? They becomne maps, perhaps! Conceptual maps for the distant experience Iraq in Europe, and for the Gujrat, maybe… or simply, maps where the culturally loaded-offloaded-unloaded images find a place for themselves.

Beyond Painting

Sachin Karnes videos, perhaps of the first works he did as moving images, had retained the overall aesthetic qualities of his paintings.Use of two to three colours being the foremost of visual quality, apart from the bubbles that find place in his works. While "Mirror image - prime minister's dream project' was a direct blow on the political will that would undertake massive road-building exercise
but let the social infrastructure burn, the ' Monolithic Truth Serum Test' featured Sachin himself, more than the presence of a self-portrait within a painting. Here, the so-called apolitical, disinterested and unengaged social roles of an artist are challenged by bringing the artist himself as a suspect, apparently in one of the blazing incidents. Both the video works were done at a camp organized by ARTunderground.

-- Abhijeet Tamhane, Wed, 23 Mar 2005.

^*Sachin Karne's recent suite of acrylic paintings on canvas was on display at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 19th March to 4th April, 2005. The Videos were also projected at the show.

The POSTER revisited

Jitish Kallat's new work, after much globe-trotting, was here again with Gallery Chemould, Mumbai this February. And for the more informed, it reminded of his no-nonsense ability as a 'poster' maker!
The poster, a commonplace visual in the bollywood city of Mumbai, has always been and invitation for Jitish.He has devised means to rethink the poster as an evocative visual than a direct communication. The work, six tall canvases, had colours that looked rather funky, somewhat Warholian, and one clear image : that of a street urchin. They bear the stamp of the street. Sadak Chhaap, as an NGO used to
call them. The works have a presence of additional signifiers : a scream in all the works, for example, but the street urchin becomes monumenatised in all these canvases.
For Jitish, who 'arrived' in the field (read : market) seven years ago with autobiographical, memory-intense works, the colours and corrosion of a poster were equally important. His work took off from the physical corrosion in paint to the computerized defacement of the image, and thus they had something abstract about them. Although he used all the advantages that a photorealist exploits, Jitish's
definite diversion from photorealism was visible in his photocopy transfers. Some artists from Mumbai were already using the photocopy transfer technique while Jitish mastered it. Then came the computer and its image-editing softwares, that helped Jitish try a different language of corrosion. Now on, the physical tampering with layers of paint was replaced by well-executed contours of a digitally corroded image. The abstract remained with him, while he was getting the images executed (may just by) projecting them onto the canvas.
With the scale of demand-supply ratio Jitish handles, his ouvre cannot now ignore the reproductive part. The newness, then, lies not with how he renders the image or how his canvases look different from the just-shown ones, but with what images he shows and why. The why aspect makes him contemporary.
Jitish knows this. He would talk about the Ramnami sect and his long conversations/emails with a (US-based) scholar who researched the sect. The ploy for self-defence, insists Jitish, finds its place on the skin. The urchins, he would reveal, have the defence mechanisms in their body language and, as if, under their skins. The urchins, to him, are the embodiment of chameleon spirit of the megapolis!
Appropriation of a distant research, tactical and critical ways to swallow it and apply to one's practice and revelations of reality that might not sound inductive. Jitish's argument is that post-NGO social observer. It is not community-specific, nor self-rationalising. Be it Malunde of South Africa or the Sadak Chhaps of Mumbai/Delhi, be they unemployed youth of Brazil, Botswana or Bihar, Jitish processes his data vis-a-vis the rarely asked questions, and surpasses the survey
mode to attain an endoscopic understanding.
The multiple images in his earlier works have lessened over time, and Jitish has perhaps learnt the pointedness of an Internet poster : one who posts on a public/group members' message-board on the web. The poster on the web has his/her defined signature and style. Yet, s/he would try and speak a language that might interest others, will invite response and, above all, will employ virtual communication to explore a reality out there, beyond virtual!

-- abhijeet tamhane.

Sanjeev Sonpimpare : Skeptics

Sanjeev Sonpimpare's painting, Chakki, was different from other works in his show, Skeptics
Sanjeev Sonpimpare's paintings were exhibited at Jehangir Art Gallery last December. The body of works had a strong presence of a virtual window that emerged out of a gradation of black to white tones.
Sanjeev employed this as an image itself, as if to symbolize victory of the computer over human hand, and then tried to defy it, by painting it himself. 'Something had to pass through the window', says Sanjeev, who chose the passing images. It began with a magazine cover, a reworked Mughal miniature painting, and went on to many other images. Individuals and styles that are said to have shaped the taste
of art-public in their respective times, Ravi Varma and Manjit Bawa, were under Sanjeev's gaze. The gaze of a painter who wants to outgrow the Mumbai- 1990s scene that shaped his generation. The same gaze comes upon sympathetically towards images that are closer to middle-class reality and challenges. The images that passed through those virtual windows had a curious connection with money/power and the lack of it. The Sceptics, as Sanjeev called the series, must have been an attempt for Sanjeev to reconcile his own aesthetic preference for working with surfaces, treating the image to be rendered in different ways, and his philosophical urge to ponder on life that he has observed and is living. The virtual that fragments the real into manageable pieces. However, the humour was overshadowed by the
quassi-surrealist looks.
Sanjeev's renderings looked somewhat loud. Did they have to be so, to amplify the presence of a human hand? Or was it because of the overpowering presence of tonal gradation in many of the paintings?
Sanjeev's recent works and his focus on life prove that Sceptics had a cathartic value for the painter himself.
- Abhijeet Tamhane

FILL : RELEASE Navjot's Videos

FILL : RELEASE

Navjot's activity in producing the two video works : Mumbai Meri Jaan (2004) and Lacuna in Testimony (2003), has been that of an artist and a resourceperson. The four-part and three-part works shown at different venues including Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai in November and have been traveling in Gujarat, have a finger- pointing at the parochial, right-wing ideologies that shun minorities. The finger is Novjot's; while the hands that have worked toward it are many.

For an artist who has been organizing people for the attainment of work(s) of art, these two videos seem an arrived effort. The (upto) 30-feet projections were technically almost flawless. What lets questions open is the artist's conceptual process that the work stands evidence to. Navjot's conceptual thrust has been vastly on sourcing of the images (still or moving, stocked or fresh) and relevant texts.
This sourcing process seems to have been preferred over formal conceptualization that guides and shapes the sourced data. For a viewer who does not cherish the importance of the sourcing process, the data looks incidental. The choice left, is to make the data communicate, loosing some aesthetic accent.

Yet, The four-part video work, Mumbai Meri Jaan (2004), can be read as a critical text pertaining the notions of belonging and uprootedness, innocence and street-smartness, shows the wicked ways of a megapolis to internalize its subaltern. There are many approaches open for a reader, and the best one is of a pre-bollywood Hindi film type narrative of a street urchin. For a reader aesthetically more informed, there are transitions of colour that make their own trajectories through the presented data.

The sourcing- data- presentation- formal choice paradigm becomes oblique in Lacuna in Testimony. The aesthetic- communicative values are trickier. Hierarchy of sourcing over formal choice is out and open, yet the visual treatment is subtle. Except for the end: the sea that embeds images from holocaust through Gujarat-2002 undergoes a colour transition from the natural tones to blood red.

What happens to the time spent with the two videos? While the journey through Mumbai's nitty-gritty is restless, the sea of violence is almost cathartic and abreactive. While the first fills images, the second releases them.

- abhijeet tamhane

NGMA- Mumbai : Ideas and Images VI

It is fondly called the Mumbai Magazine Show. The National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai (NGMA-M) brings it out annually, with the support of Bombay-wallah artists. The five-storied architecture of the NGMA-M unfolds like various departments in a magazine : usually one retrospective 'Artist's Profile' section that helps re-think the revered artists, then a section that upholds collectivism in art, and a section that vies to internalize the otherwise 'peripheral' visual arts, another that facilitates showcasing the choice of a set of art-public in the city (critics, celebrities, corporations, artists, this time the 5 major Galleries), and yet another that showcases leading young artists en theme. Critically, the show does not leave a composite impact. Neither do the curators intend such an impact.
Instead, each section has its highlights, and a section becomes the highlight of the Magazine. Cosmopolitan 'Bambai' thus cheers up to the spirit of a five-in-one cocktail (and the opening night blooms even without a millilitre of alcohol)! This year's Magazine, equally extensive, was opened by theatre doyen and art connoisseur Ibrahim Alkazi, on October 20. As the invitees auscultated to Mr. Alkazi's heart for the arts, few smart ones had already started eyeing the works featured.
The 'Art Gallery's choice' section seemed all set to make history ahead. With important works by Hussain, Souza, Tyeb Mehta, Prabhakar Barwe and Atul Dodiya, it almost resembled a fireworks display! A Krishen Khanna painting of the 1970s, though highly restored, commanded a collectors' gaze. It is learnt that this sizeable Khanna
painting is a new acquisition by the Sakshi Gallery, who took the painter's authentication on the restored work. The painting also intrigued critics, for its wavy, complicated structure with six human figures. This monochromatic specter is not about Christ being shrouded, but about the trauma of losing a loved and revered one.
K. K. Hebbar's mini-retrospective profile welcomed the viewer with his seminal work of a period when he had been highly influenced by Gauguin and Sher Gill ( 'Sunny South' - 1956). Hebbar's dancing line took many curves through his artistic career, and most of them were represented.
Curious were the two works dated 1946 and 48. A student of the JJ school of art, Hebbar could not evade the movement characterised by the presence of Jagannath Ahiwasi as a teacher of the 'Indian Drawing' class. Both these were family portraits (Artist's mother, his wife and daughter) turned into an miniaturish loyalty to the flat surface, the Indian decorative fervour... and yet, the work (esp. Mother) has
impulsive occurrences of the Western, Academic anatomical correctness.
Compare Hebbar's Sunny South, a detached composition of human figures, to his late (1993) painting of the Railway Porters! Proficiency in handling colour, line and texture is, through decades, impregnated with pathos for the subaltern. Indeed, many of the 25-odd oils showed Hebbar's engagement with the subaltern. Fisherfolk, village devotees, folk performers, revellers at a wedding ceremony... all these
essentially shared the Nehruvian ethos of upholding the subaltern for the traditions they enliven. Hebbar's Railway Porters, listening probably to a visually visually- challenged beggar's flute, go beyond this 'speaking for the subaltern' idea. They are the subaltern who can speak. They are not themselves engaged in an act... instead, they are consuming it. A sweeper there, cannot be a part of the group of porter men. The Orwellian ' some are more equal', works.
The Hebbar profile show was preceded by a collective quilt. Made of equal-sized canvases by female artists : Lalita Lajmi, Meera Devidayal, Anju Dodiya, Jin Sook Shinde, Dhruvi Acharya, Sejal Kshirsagar... 14, in all. Mostly Bombayites, most of them seemed to know how to paint their signature stuff! Some, like Devidayal and Jin
sook experimented. Had it not been Brinda Chudasama - Miller's effort to install them, the pieces would have looked quite odd against each other. A sheer absence of collective identity still dominates.
Pottery-artists from across the country, old and new, found their pedestals in the fourth section. Loaned from the collection of Sanggeta Jindal, Pheroza Godrej and Prafulla Dahanukar, it had artists like Jyotsna Bhatt, Angad Vohra, Brahmadev Pandit, Kiran Gujral... and mid-career or newer talents like G. Reghu, Vineet Kacker, Madhavi Subramanian, Vinod Daroz. It was also interesting to note who has
collected whom.
The next section, 'Diary of an Art-work', worked on the seeing and believing capacities of the viewer. The notes and visual documentation of the process behind the work displayed here, spoke less with diaries. Some fell in the trap of self-boasting, some lured themselves to process-based photo-collages, some others hid their process under the verbose carpet while writing a generic 'artists statement'. Some jotted words assuming it is the dictionary-publisher's problem if viewers do not understand what they mean; while there was a small sub-set, who photocopied the relevant dictionary entries to render the viewer baffled. Kaushik Mukhopadhyay subtly negated the wathch-while I work voyeur and questioned the curatorial brief, as Santosh More visualised the dilemma of 'being asked' to create. As a coordinator,
Brinda Miller seemed to have provided specific points that would suffice a viewer's urge to know whatever that goes into the process (this was also evident from some of the artist's notes; while many others mocked 'em! )... and despite this mockery, you'd see a pletohra of visual talent. Sandeep Paradkar's uneasy ochres talking directly to you of the odd-but-everyday occurances around Mumbai, A dialectic of
within-without :well-visualised by Santosh Kshirsagar, and Sunil Padwal, A story-labytinth by Himanshu Desai.. to top it all, there was a work just downstairs the NGMA-M dome : Archana Hande, who was inspired to do a Patua-chitra story-book for Urban young people, chose to show the films she made on 'Pata -chitrakars'! Process, thus, was more important than her product.
What the Mumbai Magazine Show lacks is editorial bias. Yet, a lot of activity happening around the show, the delight of re-finding known artists and locating the less-known, sets it apart from gossip and coffeetable Magazines.
- Abhijeet Tamhane.

Mumbai Round-up : Pre- Season : August to Mid-November, 2004

New Galleries
To add to the 20-odd (operative) Art Galleries in Mumbai, Three new ones are added pre-winter 2004 season. Of them, called the "Phillips Contemporary", can well be said the first : it is the gallery looking for curatorial vantage points, rather than the sale advantage. And this is not qouted from a journalistic interview with either of the directors (Mortimer Choudhari and Tara Lal), but is rather an observation. The first show at the Phillips was Nasreen Mohammedi retrospective, in three parts.Some unexhibited photographs that had Nasreen's markings were shown here. The abstractionst sojourn was continued with Jeram Patel's woodworks and watercolours, followed by Pamela Singh's photo-paint works Later this year, this small space will house Anant Joshi's installation : black to play and draw, that featured in 'Body/city' (curated by Geeta Kapur, berlin) and Japan Foundation Asia Center (curated by Puja Sood) but never shown in India. Sudarshan Shetty, a talented sensation from Mumbai, is working specially for the Phillips Contemporary. Shows of some unseen young talents, like Rajesh
Pullarwar and Sudhir Pande, are also in the Offing.

In same Kala Ghoda (art district) vicinity as the Phillips, the dynamic dealer Vibhuraj Kapoor has finally set his venture, Gallery Beyond within four white walls. Considerably spacious by the Mumbai standards, Beyond will now vie for a different breed of artists :
Sanjeev Sonpinpare's painted comments on the so-called "important" styles, and Yashvant Deshmukh's works that cusps the real and the 'drawn' perceptions, Praksh Chandwadkar's intriguing Buddhas... are in the pipeline.
The third Gallery that opened recently, is not well-received as yet. Tarana Khubchandani and Jisal Thacker operate it from Worli.

Artists :
Individual painters that left a mark were many. Vinod Sharma, Rini Dhumal, Navjot... apart from these "well-known" ones, Reena Sain at Chemould with her visual odes to the predicament of commoners, coupled with her tkae on the old-European graphic representations of fictional villains, was sure to get applause. A bold Mumbai debut was
that of Julius Macwan, a painter trained at Sir JJ School of Art and now settled down in Chennai, went way ahead in establishing his brand-equity as a thinking artist. "Hope" at Jamaat Art Gallery by Abhimanyu Ray, showed the drama of black-and-white, while Vanita Gupta's ascetic strokes in black were enshrined at Pundole art Gallery. The Guild Art Gallery continued its passion for pedagogical presence and also its preference for K. Laxma Goud, by juxtaposing Goud's drawings with F N Souza's, which is now epitomised in a book-form. Sajal Sarkar made a vigorous presence with Cymroza. Then, there was Anand Prabhudesai, one the handful scupltors from Mumbai to use marble. Anand worked a metamorphosis of Marble and Yarn (!), and made poignant ponderings on the middle-class life, in a city once known as the textile capital! To the more informed, Ashok Ahuja's (inkjet) prints at Ruia House (by now established as a Gallery) were a thoughtful sight. Milburn Cherian, with her surrealist understanding of the human bondage, seemed to have arrived further, with her recent Jehangir show. Collectible paintings in her "naiive" style were offered by Naina Kanodia, while city's favourite scrap-sculptor Arzan Khambatta made headlines with taking smaller works, and also, when
Khambatta's opening night turned into "Amitabh Bacchan's birthday evening" (with big B's presence, and it was his B'day!).

Like all marketplaces, the Mumbai Artdom often confuses celebrity presence with serious creativity. At the same time, it also creates niches for the serious ones. The effort here, is to trace both these tendencies with an inclination towards serious talent.

- abhijeet tamhane

Vanitas Vanitaum a show curated by Peter Nagy

... omnia vanitas?

The props played lead role and Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai was the stage.
Curator Peter Nagy, who flew late August from Delhi to Mumbai, prefered to call the show 'a curated installation'. Mumbaiites will remember this show, Vanitas Vanitaum, as much forNagy's communicative essay, his eye on detail, as for the the artists and their work.

While the show dealt with the 'props' : a consumerist proposition, it seemed to address a post-consumerist situation. The artists : Atul Dodiya, Bose Krishnamachari, Anita Dube, Subodh Gupta, Mario D'Souza, Bharti Kher, Arun Kumar H.G., Samit Das, and Dayanita Singh, subverted the old concept of 'vanitas vanitatum' (vanity of vanities, here understood as ' the objects included in official portraits of royalty and nobility ') to what they saw as today. The show could easily fall into traps of nostalgia, but it didn't. Instead, it had multiple energies, with as many analyses. Nagy the curator emphasises their diverse formal pursuits as 'inexhaustible source of associations'.

The associations, within the Vanitas Vanitatum, ranged from Atul Dodiyas work evoking memory of the 'lost' Fathers, with his use of Radio-sets and such other middle-class props in the 1950s-60s; to the neo- art deco bedroom that flaunts everything goes in it (rubberized coir wall-panels and flooring, a hyper-ergonomic bed, with matching sidetables and wall-clock, a Bose painting and a bookshelf with
no-nonsese art-books gifted by authors or artists... even detailed thingies like a bra-panty 'just lying there' or the wine glasses et al) . While Dayanita Singh's lens pans over an array of interiors, Samit Das focuses on "looking back in order to look forward" tophotographs from the Tagore house. The photographs encounter with
Subodh Gupta's punch of Male egocentricity, Bharti Kher's animal tales with a human sting-tail, Arun Kumar's bizarre toys and an impossible please-all Chai-kettle, Anita Dube's military-comoflauged oven and Safe (Tijori) filed with utensils, rupees and bones alike!

An interior full of subversions, here, subverted the gaze! the black and white notions about form and function plunged into the gray areas of who vanitates him/herself, why and how. The search for answers begins with the show, without leading to a frustrated dead-end of 'Omnia Vanitas' (all is vanity). Instead, it celebrates the diversity of Vanitas vanitatum ad infinitum!

-- abhijeet tamhane, Mumbai, september 2004.

notes that call YOUR intervention:

These are short notes on some Indian Artists.
They're not biographical notes, nor are they complete appreciatory notes.
These are jottings, and I'd luv and respect your suggestions.
please comment.


MF HUSSAIN (1915- )

Verve and vigour define his line. His energy ascertains itself thoughcolour. The texture coincides his chiseled looks. M F Hussain (born1915) is more than this. He is perhaps synonymus with India’s modernpainting. Here’s a visual artist who experimented with many otherfields, cinema and even writing. While his experimentation withinpainting now has been focused to the subject he chooses, this founderof the ‘Progressive Artists Group’ has already come a long way, fromcurves to cuts. The drama of being Hussain, at 88, takes new turns!

PARITOSH SEN (1918-)

Paritosh Sen’s career as an artist, teacher and scholar sprawls overdecades, he has worked in cities of India and Europe alike. As afounder of the Calcutta Group (1943), Sen sought newer trends than therevivalist, orientalist styles prevalent in Bengal. In the process,Sen gave voluminous quality to the line drawing. Picasso and hiscubism impressed sen, but Sen’s own sense of satire, irony and hissensuous quality are unique. An octogenarian Sen, refuses to grow old!

SYED HAIDER RAZA (1922 -)

This octagenarian who lives in france, has been the source of Urja(energy) to the tantric metaophysical painting in India. He sharessecrets of life in its etenity, with Geometrical shapes and customarycolour. His journey as a founder of the Progressive Artists Group andas a profane expressionist, also finds a place in his later ode to thesacred : his stokes are still unmistakble.

RAM KUMAR (1924-)

Training in Paris under the two Moderns : Andre Lhote and FernandLeger in the 1950s, did influence Ramkumar, a youg Economics graduate,to depict his society and its predicament. Later, for more than thelast 45 years, he paints landscapes. His compulsive passion to paintflows over boundless terrains. Benares ghat-scapes paved the way forhis spiritual leanings toward white, gray, turquoise and ochre. Adefined pallette has meant freedom for an intellectual Ramkumar. He,with his abstract landscapes, opens up the inner spaces for theviewer.

KRISHEN KHANNA (1925-)

Mumbai gave him artist friends like Hussain, Ara and Bal Chhabda, andthe decisive moment to give up a banker’s job for full-time pursuit ofart. Khanna, known for his bold, guestural strokes, has undoubtedlyopened new horizons for the figurative art in Contemporary India. Hiseclectic style, say critics, ‘breaks away from the traditional notionsto achieve an even more radical position’. Thought his mid-careerseries of Bandwallas was in vibrant colours, Khanna has never forgonehis monocromic pallette.

SATISH GUJRAL (1925-)

Texture is an overture for Satish Gujral. It precedes his symphony ofline, form and colour. He sings the song of worldly and metaphysicalpresence, with a favorite theme of man and animal. Altough his presentsyle is pictorial figurative, Gujral is known for his sctulpuralabstractions as well as his architecture.

AKBAR PADAMSEE (1928-)

Creativity is not momentary. It’s a process of doing. Doing what youare and becoming you. Akbar Padamsee’s ink drawings as well as hislate oils may seem austere, yet they have an abundance of action.Philosophical quest has often lead artists to abandon figuration andexplore the non-representative; but Padamsee stands as a gracefulexception. In his journey from ‘Metascapes’ of the 1970s and 80s,Padamsee has abstracted the process of abstraction into ‘doing’.Padamsee, a believer and practitioner of the Indian RASA theory ofæsthetics, has his signature heads, nudes or human bodies, ametaphysical presence.

JERAM PATEL (1930-)

For Jeram Patel, who was trained as a typographer in London, it musthave been a process of unlearning when he arrived at his abscractform. Though the las 40 years, he has explored the possibilities ofcontent with from and technique. The rustic, expressionist, charcoliccloud in his work has always retined the potential of an IndianHarvest of abstraction. Patel, a founder of the “group 1890”, stillretains the vigour in his work.

LALITA LAJMI (1932-)

Relationships form the text and context for Lalita Lajmi. Hermetaphorical use of details in a building, aminals like cat amuses aswell as enlighten the viewer. Her watercolours have always, for thelast 30-odd years, been lucid and flowing, exploring and documentingthe familial and social values today.

VED NAYAR (1933-)

The elongated form that surpasses giocometti’s existentialism for Hopein Indian philosophy, marks Ved Nayar’s colourful paintings. Hisplayful, instinctive use of colour and space is remarkable, while hisintrovert content emanates from the painter’s ascetic personality.

SHYAMAL DUTTA RAY (1934-)

He used water colour as expressively as oils, without compromising thefuild, transparent quality of the medium. Today, he has proved atrend-setter. No wonder he has many successors, of sorts. ShyamalDutta Ray is at the helm of art from Bengal, and his appeal crossesgeographical boundries.

GANESH HALOI(1936- )

His closer inspections of Ajanta frescos facilitated hiscontemplations of texture. Ganesh Haloi stands tall in an otherwisefigurative contemporary art sceario from Bengal. A trueabstractionist, he makes his own terrain with line, colour andtexture.

GANESH PYNE (1937-)

The Line, in Ganesh Pyne’s work, is straight and impulsive. It is hisstream-of-thought, multidirectional visual contemplations which turnlines into image, for him. His line reign supreme over skeletal formsand austere use of colour.

JOGEN CHOWDHARY (1939- )

Sarcastic, commentative figures is his customaty double-hatchtechnique are quintessential to Jogen Chowdhary’s ouvre. His laterwork deals with more painful human conditions, but there is acontinuous stream of his india ink drawings that explores the existentbeauty.

MANU PAREKH (1939-)

Vigorous, impulsive and exressive strokes define his art. Vibrantcolour in his painting is unmistakably coupled with virile, manlyexpression of line and form. The natural forces are omnipresent in hiswork. Content is never a foreign proposition for Manu Parekh : it isinnate, with every stroke.

BOSE KRISNAMMACHARI ( 1962-)

Life in the city, the company of books, and the lives of Artists are the intellectual passions for Bose Krishnammachari. This JJ School of Art graduate has been among the vanguards of postmodern painting in India. His unmistakable riot of colour, now embodied in his untitled works, was in the centre of his installations as well, while his meticulous figurative work would have a context. This intellectual element, however, never stops a viewer from enjoying a Bose work!

SANJEEV SONPIMPARE (1969-)

Sanjeev, with his keen interest in the paradoxes and dissonaces of life - here and now- believes in a conceptual consistency of the eternal. Clarity of Thought and action guides his creativity. His recent works speak about the predicament of the city life.

RIYAS KOMU (1971-)

Committment to humanity has driven Komu to observe life. While his works as a student at the JJ School of Art had a strong and often direct political content, his paintings now point to a global reality of opresseion and resistance. Life flows, and so flows history. Komu in his role as an iconographer of Human Life, also makes exellent use of signage. His recourse to Brügel or his quest for Ravi Varma has been seen occasionaly in his works, but clearly, his grasp of history is not occasional.

Pradeep Mishra.

He wants real people; and not the habituated 'art public' to see his work. Sensing the suffocation and staleness in the air, Pradeep Mishra, a young post-graduate from JJ school of art, tries to infuse new breath in it. Pradeep, who just finished is journey from extrovert pastiche to introvert imagery, is now conscious about the signified.