Re-humanising Inquiry

Riyas Komu’s recent show, titled Grass*, was a suite photographs. Komu might be better known for his paintings and for the assemblages and sculptures that he designed for some recent shows, but he is rather a strategic visual artist. Grass was a part of this strategic, interventionist oeuvre. Komu, this time, chose to exhibit photographs that featured faces of adolescent boys and men in their twenties who work at a garage in his neighbourhood. A discerning viewer would remember Komu’s assemblages with used motorcycle parts. These were the boys who actually welded the parts. No doubt there was a sense of comraderie that charted a relationship between the artist and the boys. It was visible on the faces, the way they looked at Komu’s camera, with confidence and some kind of friendly eloquence in their eyes.

True, the relationship here was not equal, to begin with. The artist was from a ‘high’ social and economic class whereas the boys, low. What Komu has done as an observer of life and its implications, and more importantly as a rebel against those implications, is to defy and question the notions that define such inequalities. Who told you the boys were ‘lesser’? - the show asked a viewer. When you looked at each photograph and tended to stare at the eyes of a boy, behind the frozen photographic moment you saw signs life. A life that could have been full of troubles if measured and compared to the standard that we aggregate as living standards for a happy life. The world banks standards, by the WHO standards or even the rhetoric of Indian Constitution would disapprove the living conditions as unadvisable. Yet, the ease with which the boys carried themselves was a proof that they enjoyed life, wanted to enjoy it and as if, were sure to succeed.

What are their ideas of success? To own a garage, however small? To be employed as a driver with some big Seth? To go to ‘Dubai’, maybe? The pictures won’t speak up. Guesswork helps, in understanding that they must have had alternate sets of blueprints for a happy life. The show opened up these blueprints, and pointed to the historical as well as contemporary predicament of those who have to search for greener pasteurs. All this, when the Mumbai media have been anticipating the local political parties for an outburst against ‘outsiders’ to the city.

In strict photographic parlance, they were all Portrait busts. To overcome the classification and the prescriptive package of appreciation, the artist had employed a different technique : to print the photographs with all their sharpness, but in undertones. On a matt-finish archival paper, the gray, sometimes green undertone shades would invite an inquiry that precedes appreciation. The distance that the tonal loss attributed to these pictures was to be overcome by you, the viewer. Existence, here, was clearer than the object. All the pictures had names of the boys, but they were seldom legible. What would a white letter, on a five percent black look like? This technical strategy was congruent with their supposed namelessness.

The leftist-romanticist ‘style’ of demonizing the work conditions and then searching for a domesticated protagonist or an untamed hero has come a long way. The artist as a researcher has accepted the role of participant observer. Participant, in so far as s/he interacts with people or a group and then charts a strategy that re-thinks observations with a larger audience with due respect to human existence. For Komu, the humane re-orientation has been inherent since the days when he was an undergraduate art student. Not a PR statement by the artist, this. It is just a recollection by a writer who has seen Komu for last 8-odd years, when the latter struggled mend the ways within the JJ School of Art, Mumbai. With every work, since then, Komu has demonstrated his ability to re-humanise social-political inquiry, although his focal length differed every time.

I’d think of this show not as an exhibition that waited for applause. The success of Grass was that, it made Riyas Komu’s notes public.
-- abhijeet tamhane
* Grass : Riyas Komu, Guild Art Gallery.

The polemicist – turned- orator

Canopies and calligraphy, domes and decorative motifs… pots and coffins, burns and bullets… Riyas Komu entwined them in his recent show, with what seems to be an unending column - of religion and rivalry, piety and predation. The show at Mumbai's Sakshi Gallery in April-May, was called 'Faith Accompli', a title that had a smell of dreaded dreams and doom. Komu drew home the quandary of the debate over faith and power. The culture-specific forms that Komu conceptualized had the strength of addressing the universal. Komu's visual language attained new oratorial heights.

Komu's language has evolved with empathy toward objects which are closer to life (or death). It has not only valued precision and perspective but also materiality and measure. It has been with Komu since he was a student. Be it the red pots and photo frames or the use of tarpauline in "he used to believe EMS planted all the coconut trees in Kerala" (1998), his later engagement with watching news channels to distill the most evocative faces of commoners who have to bear the brunt, and the later experiments with the 'garage boys' at Borivli (also a part of his photographic work), who once facilitated his use of motorcycle parts that suggested a deconstructed human body. Lately, Komu used metal forms that directly denoted a religion or a party. These works form the base of his current language, where volume is as important as content. The size and repetition that adds to the volume were never used so directly by Komu, before 2005. In the current show, 'the Third Day' the scale of tin walls competes the frightening prison-cells, while the oversized, heavy wooden communion chalises evoke assurance and suspicion alike. The decorations on the canopies reach disturbing hights. ' My Fathers' Balcony' takes the myth of Noah's Arc in its stride. The repetition of red coffins and charred, holed pots make a high-pitched demand for something more than a second or a third look. The blood-red, coffin-shaped forms on the wall sport the sheen of a car you (wanted to/) own, and as you watch the' Tragedy of a carpenter's Son', your eyes feel the pale- cold touch of bare galvanized tin with its occasional corrosions.

With such content that intrigues the intellectually honest and commands emotional reflex, Komu has always been a polemicist. In the previous years, he took on the overlapping tasks of an interpreter, interrogator and advocate. Oratory comes with volume and pitch, which he has obtained now. Will this quality lead him to a major public art piece or will he be content with galleries and biennales, remains to be seen.

- abhijeet tamhane.

‘Kaikoo Banayaa?’

Art gets ready for questions on the street
(first published in Art Concerns )

For the ‘Kala Ghoda Art Festival’ (KGAF) that packed more than 150 films, dances, plays and street acts in nine days (February 3-11, 2007), the stationery aspect of the visual art segment was perhaps a respite for those who wanted an experience in totality, at their convenience. Here, too, one could list down some 33 projects by various artists or art galleries. With such a scale, the KGAF surpassed every other art-happening in the city, Dayanita Singh’s show and ‘Soft Spoken’: the 6-person show curated by Bose Krishnammachari, or the less-celebritised ‘Bombay Art Society Annual show’ included!

For the KGAF art segment to be talked about, the aspects were many. A street-art experience in Mumbai still retains its novelty. The other aspect was multiplicity (or the happy absence) of focus, and a good mix of young and established. As Brinda Miller, co-ordinator for this year’s visual art segment put it in pukka Mumbaiya hinglish, ‘Iss baar class bhi hai, mass bhi hai’!

The questions arouse when a discerning observer took to the streets to experience the class-mass responses to the class-mass art. The local (read vernacular) media made the same mistake of carrying the photographs of some artifacts for sale in the adjacent craft-stalls with naive captions like ‘an artist shows his beautiful art in the kala ghoda utsav’. The confusions about crafted beauty and communicative visual data remained intact, even without the share of such ‘beautiful’ photo-captions, while there were some other joys, rather contemporary to this year. People fell for the monumental scales, but were not afraid to ask, ‘Yeh Kya hai? Kaikoo banayaa?’ and a dialogue started.
Parag Tandel, the Thane-based lad supported by Pundole Art Gallery for his installation ‘Ambivert Space’, rendered an everyday object (the Nimboo-Mirch concoctution that, traders in the city believe, wards off evil) in a crafty way with threads. The work inspired many questions like ‘Kaikoo banayaa?’, and Parag or his friends would talk of this ‘unbranded product’ that serves the shops that sell brands, or the plight of nimboo-mirchi makers or sellers. Parag was also delighted that people, who otherwise would not touch a ‘real’ nimboo-mirchi fearing the axis of evil, dared to touch these crafted objects. This debutant artist won offers for a solo!

‘Jogya’ a nickname for Prashant Jogdand, is an artist who makes his presence felt at every KGAF. Jogya’s sculptural interventions implant human life on the trees surrounding the Jehangir Art Gallery. His trees with feet (2005), or with hands (2006), or lips and utensils (2007) can be thought of as an ongoing project with public memory. This artist who keeps a low profile also reflected on the importance of the unseen: his team displayed ‘snails on a tree’.

Natraj Sharma and N. S. Harsha, were the two cutting-edge artists who took to the street this KGAF, thanks to the Bodhi Art Gallery. Natraj’s ‘Alternative Shapes for planet Earth’ needed an open sky backdrop which it did not get, but the work was nevertheless appreciated. Helpful and tempting was the concept note that spoke and illustrated an artist’s journey back and forth painting and sculpture. Harsha’s work, biggest ever at any of the last nine KGAFs, confronted the laypersons and uninitiated eyes with equal awe.

A common visitor went rampant in his/her ‘photography spree’ at Harsha’s Aircraft, as well as Prashant Narvekar and Laxmi Nair’s ‘Helicoptook’: Prashant and Laxmi, a duo who graduaded from the JJ School of Arts and chose to exhibit after 5 years since, worked with the fantasy of an Autorickshaw equipped to fly. The most-asked question to them was, whether this three-wheeler with a stylized back-hood and wings to decorate, really flies.

Some less-interacted, yet potent works were displayed behind a row of stalls. Among them were three works by Himanshu S. and his team. ‘This revolution is for display’ sought inspiration from the Nineteen Sixties, while a direct take on the present-day was posed by ‘ Booked Street’, a re-enlivenment of the book-selling pavements that died at the hands of Municipal Council. ‘In Dog we trust’ had an interactive appeal, to lift the stuffed-toy doggies and do ‘whatever’ with them. Yet, the work was tucked in a place where there were a bit more ‘usual’ works on display, like the fantastic ‘any for six thousand’ offer by Tao Art Gallery.

Showcasing opportunities were aptly taken by some galleries, some lesser known to the city. Their shows this time were comparatively eloquent for the street-setting, even as they relied on wall-mounted or pedestelised stuff. The buzz word here was ‘reiteration’ of what one specializes in. Aakar Prakar of Kolkata came down to KGAF with ‘contemporary artists from the east’ and had pleasant surprises like (Delhi-based) Samit Das, the newly-opened Osmosis gallery reverted to brilliant-but-lesser-known artists like Madhao Imartey and Nitin Kulkarni, and ‘Red Dot Art’ stood steadfast with showcasing graphics.

Thirty three exhibits were a bit exhausting, too. The wit and wisdom in some works, like Kanchi Mehta’s ‘Smoker’, Hina Khan’s ‘Our old Scooter’ or street sculptures by Shailesh Dudhalker, seemed a bit sidelined because of the exhaustion. While these works attracted comparatively less interaction and Q-A sessions with the artists, a new dialectics of what and why to exhibit on the street was surely visible in these works. Some works, like ‘Hoardings’ by Prajakta Potnis-Ponmany, lacked the dose of supporting information in the absence of the artist.

In my opinion, the KGAF is about facilitating a ‘Pedestrians eye view of art’. It has been doing so for last nine years, but kudos! It did better this time.

- Abhijeet Tamhane, Mumbai.

Related link:
http://www.kalaghodaassociation.com/2007/

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.

Toys and teasers for those who want to grow…

(Catalogue text for Narendra Yadav, Solo Show with Sakshi Gallery)

“Far from suggesting a literal or even symbolic representation of social (as against national) identities such as those of gender/class/caste and region, new art in India needs to suspend any direct address towards the social"
- Geeta Kapur, November 13, 1998 [1].

The sense-making strategies for an artist from India have changed, and India has been watching the change. Before Narendra Yadav took a studio space he had seen the upheavals around the millennium and its 'new age' ramifications on people's lives. Anyone who lives in a fast-growing district of the commercial capital of an emerging superpower must have taken some lessons from what one saw as the play of time. Narendra's lessons included a critical study: are people really thinking of themselves differently? Are the notions changing, or do they exist under a changed garb?

In a country whose father taught "indriya nigraha" by pointing to the three wise monkeys [2­­] , the attack on senses is imminent. Narendra does not lament on loss of nigraha. He does a monument to suit the changed situation, instead. A viewer might identify the monument with the crowds in Ginza of Tokyo since the 1960s or, more apparently, the mall-pub metroculture of Mumbai in recent years. The iconography is satirical and of course referential, but it does not pooh-pooh the Japanese or the Gandhian reference. The work owns a calm emotional tone, a wise smile on ourselves, wrapped in a most neutral-looking title.

The task to scrutinize and polemicize the self-illusory hedonism that surrounds the air of capitalism and consumerism has been taken up by artists before [3] . The strategy of subversion first emerged as a successful one, as if subversion is the most-sought attribute for turning your artists into heroes, a game that curators and catalogues and 'big' shows often play. In a scenario where an artist-observer is expected to take on the role of an entertaining agitationist, there are artists who, wittingly or accidentally, take up the task of subverting the game itself. They blur the borders of persuasion and polemics. One can sense these blurred borders in Narendra's work.

In his analysis as a participant-observer of purposeless hunger and self-indulgence (read, 'wellness'), Narendra suspects a Pavlovian conditioning. An ever-changing, ever-increasing association of stimuli and responses, that sets the rhythm of everyday actions. We all get to our cell phones when the bell rings, he observes in a temporal, performance-based work; and moves on to enquire whether an image of moving fan - video projection on the ceiling, brings some comfort and some sleepy feelings to the audience with eyes wide open. The foot that relaxes itself through a concrete pillar in ' Dust particles suspended in the air to perform pranayama' , annotates the enquiry with pathos and formalizes the empathy for the observed.

The systems that affect the values of a glocal mind in India are many: Bollywood, News Channels, IT… to name a few. Narendra points to the mediated feelings of being loved while you compete at the ‘Abhisarsthana’, or playing nemesis with ‘Stress-release toys for quick justice‘, while you are only bringing down some symbols of the so-called evil . The two works seem communicative to the brink of getting obvious, say their visual clues. But the problematique is sensed in their suggested or hand-driven movement. For the less obvious, seemingly 'complex' works, Narendra assists the viewer with his own titles, like ' Partially elevating apparatus based on a dogma requiring intervention'. The works retort values, and yet have an essential playful, interactive quality.
\nThe play element in Narendra Yadav\'s art is, to me, his reverence for the time. His works demand a chunk of your time in the gallery. They ask for your engagement, persuade you off the \'eye for art\' dictat. His approach is comparable to that of \'integrative arts\' as professed by educationists, to help them learn. Sarcasm or subversion is not the raison d\'être of Narenda\'s works. Nor does he want the viewer to be baffled and feel powerless for not being a thinker otherwise. The invitation to think is open, though; with titles that carry out their task to invite in a rather proactive manner. Narendra also looks back at the common reverence for text, and his titles like \'enery created by fluttering logic in the mid-air\', would invite to drill the text in favour of the matter.\n\n \nThe common audience to India\n\'s contemporary art is not only the uninitiated lot. It also consists of the formalist \'old art\' lot, over-initiated by the colonial art-teaching methods coupled with feudal inertia for artistic enquiry. I would like to imagine their reactions to Narendra\'s work. For instance, among his revolving works, Nelson Mandela toy/monument (colour blender) a stubborn formalist who would still see the \'treatment\' that Mandela\'s ears have undergone, but would be driven to the action of \'blending\' the what s/he has always seen as opposite colours. The reason for using Mandela (and not the usual Ganpati idol that 55 per cent of India\'s sculptors seem to incorporate in their shows unmistakably), lay not in having to do away with the ears, s/he would (hopefully) reveal, and be driven to think why Mandela is put as a mascot of blending opposite colours. Similar situations may occur for at least half of the works shown.\n\n",1]
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The play element in Narendra Yadav's art is, to me, his reverence for the time. His works demand a chunk of your time in the gallery. They ask for your engagement, persuade you off the 'eye for art' regime. His approach is comparable to that of 'integrative arts' as professed by educationists, to help them learn. Sarcasm or subversion is not the raison d'être of Narendra’s works. Nor does he want the viewer to be baffled and feel powerless for not being a thinker otherwise. The invitation to think is open, though; with titles that carry out their task to invite in a rather proactive manner. Narendra also looks back at the common reverence for text.

The layperson with reference to India's contemporary art is not only the uninitiated lot. It also consists of the formalist 'old art' lot, over-initiated by the colonial art-teaching methods coupled with feudal inertia for artistic enquiry. I would like to imagine their reactions to Narendra's work. For instance, with his revolving Nelson Mandela toy/monument called ‘Colour Blender’ , a stubborn formalist who would still notice the treatment that Mandela's ears have undergone, but would be driven to the action of 'blending' what s/he has always seen as opposite colours. The reason for using Mandela (and not the usual Ganpati idol that 55 per cent of India's sculptors seem to incorporate in their shows unmistakably), lay not in having to do away with the ears, s/he would (hopefully) reveal, and be driven to think why Mandela is put as a mascot of blending opposite colours. Similar situations may occur for at least half of the works shown.

There are three works which might pose Narendra himself as a formalist-poetic exponent… the most eye-catching 'Amniotic continents' has a definitive formalist bend, a more poetic 'Droplets drifting to unknown' is almost magical in its structure and spiritual in its suggestion, and the bread-slices with ‘designer’ egg yokes that flaunt streaks of colour. Confront these with his witty "kibosh" on art criticism, a conceptual work that knows how to keep the formalist instincts in their place. The artist's field of enquiry- human values and behaviour – may seem distant in these works, but they outline Narendra's broader spectrum of activity.

Narendra has a handful peers in his story so far. His efforts in exploring the substance of his sculptural works, in understanding the mechanics so as to outdo its spell, and in addressing newer issues that haunt a local as well as global audience, are certainly directed to shape the new sculpture from India.

-- Abhijeet Tamhane,
Mumbai, June 2006.

[1] Concluding remarks, quoted from a lecture : "What's New in Indian Art : Canons, Commodification, Artists on the Edge" at India International Centre, New Delhi; a part of ResArtis 6th General Meeting. Later published in the Marg volume: 2000 : Reflections on the Arts in India.

[2] The Nikko Toshogo Shrine, also known as the Sacred Stable, in Japan has a carving of three wise monkeys. Many scholars believe the monkeys were carved as a visual representation of the religious principle, "If we do not hear, see, or speak evil, we ourselves shall be spared all evil."
http://web-japan.org/atlas/architecture/arc05.html

[3] Barbara Kruger, 'I shop therefore I am' is one of the favorites.

Art Galleries in Mumbai

List of Mumbai's Art Galleries
Walk/Drive A : Flora Fountain, Kala Ghoda, Lion Gate, Regal Circle, Colaba Causway, Cuffe Parade, Nariman Point.

Pundole Art Gallery : 22841837
369. DN Road, Flora Fountain (hutatma Chowk), Adjacent to American Dryfruit Store


Jehangir Art Gallery : 22048212 (Anil, Arvind)
Kala Ghoda Circle (now Netji Subhash Chowk)opp. Elphinstonne College, MG Road.

Gallery Chemould :22833640 ( Mr. Ashley, Ms Oli)
First Floor of Jehangir Art Gallery, opp. Elphinstonne College, MG Road. (Chemould will get bigger shortly, at a new space in CST/ Fort area.


Museum Contemporary Gallery : 22844484
Behind Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum (Formerly Prince of Wales Museum), Maxmuller Bhavan, K. Dubhash Marg (rampart Row), next to Jehangir Art Gallery.


Bodhi Art Gallery : 6610 0124
28, K. Dubash Marg, I. T. T. S. House, Kalaghoda. Opposite 'Museum Contemporary Gallery'


Artists' Centre : 22845939
1st Floor, Ador House, 6, K. Dubhash Marg (Rampart Row), Near Jehangir Art Gallery and Behind Prince Of Wales Museum, Kala Ghoda.

Haceinda Art Gallery : 22837232 (Puneeta)
Great Western Building, Ground Floor, next to Artists' Centre, Kala Ghoda.

Gallery Beyond : 22837345 (prema)
130/132, 1st floor, Great Western Building, Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg, Opposite Lions Gate,shahid Bhagat Singh Marg.


National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) : 22881969
Cowasjee Jehangir Public Hall, Opp. Regal Cinema and Opp. Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Museum (Formerly Prince of Wales Museum), MG Road. Regal Cinema Circle (Shyamaprasad Mukherjee Chowk)

Sakshi Gallery : 66103424
Tanna House, Ground Floor, 11-A, Nathalal Parekh Marg (Woodhouse Road), Colaba.


the Guild : 22848260 (Preeti)
28 B, Pipewalla Building, 58/70 Shahid Bhagatsigh Marg (colab causway),Opp. Camy Wafers, Colaba.


Jamaat : 22162957 (Pravina Mecklai)
40, Seventh Floor, Shirin South, Shahid Bhagatsigh Marg (colab causway), near Post office, Colaba.

Ashish Balram Nagpal's Gallery : 56385472
No.#7, the Courtyard, SP Centre, Behind Radio Club, Next to Athena, 41/44, Minoo Desai Marg, Colaba.

Gallry 7 : 22183996 (Chandra Doshi)
21, Old Cuffe parade Road, next to Atur Terraces, (before Hotel Taj President), colaba.

Kamalnayan Bajaj Art Gallery : 22023626 (Sandeep Prabhakar)
Ground Floor, Bajaj Bhavan, opp. CR-2 (inox) Nariman Point.

Piramal Gallery / Centre for Photogrphy as an Art Form (CPA) : 22029483
National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) Complex, Experimental Theatre Block, First Floor, Nariman Point- NCPA.

Jehangir Nicholson Gallery : 22833737, 22833838
National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) Complex, Library Block, First Floor, Nariman Point- NCPA.


Walk/Drive B : Nehru Centre and Breach Candy


Art & Soul : 24965798
1, Madhuli, Poonam Chamber Complex, Dr. Annie Beasant Road, Worli.

Tao Art Gallery (1,2 and 3) : 24918585
Sarjan Plaza, behind Lotus Petrol Pump, 100, Dr Annie Besant Road, Worli

Nehru Centre Art Gallery (+ Nehru Centre Circular Gallery) : 24964676
Discovery of India Building, Ground Floor, Dr. Annie Beasant Road, Worli.

Cymroza Art Gallery : 23671983
72 Bhulabhai Desai Road, between American Consulate and Breach Candy Hospital, opp. Snowman's Ice Cream Parlour. Breach Candy.


A Strongly Recommended Art Resource Centre:
Mohile-Parikh Centre For Visual Arts : MPCVA :22838380/81
National Center for the Performing Arts (NCPA) Complex, Library Block, Ground Floor, Nariman Point- NCPA.


Some other spaces/ Galleries :



Pradarshak Art Gallery : 26462681
100. Kalpana, Plot No. 338, near Madhu Park, 12th Road, Khar. (Western Railway)

The Osmosis Gallery : 2637 0194 / 3291 1534
175, Aram Nagar II, J P Road, Versova, Andheri (W), Mumbai - 400 061 (Western Railway)




Alliance Françoise : 22036187 (Shireen)
Theosophy Hall, next to Nirmala Niketan College, 40, New Marine Lines, Churchgate.

Art Land 56350776
3rd Floor, Esplanade Mansion, Next to Army & Navy Bldg., MG Road, Kala Ghoda. Churchgate-CST.

Art Musings : 22163339
1, Admiralty House, Opp. Dunne's School, Colaba Cross lane, next to Sassoon Dock, Colaba.

Art Quest : 22150083
Shop No. 1, Daulat Building, next to Colaba Post Office, Colaba.

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.