Weighing The Scale - Size Matters, Gallery Latitude 28, Review

The exhibition was presented in two parts and we saw a diversity in visual expression with each artist presenting their concept of size. This was not necessarily done by tackling the basic premise of the size of their ‘canvas’ and how the content or intent differed, was inhibited or expanded upon, by virtue of size. However, it was interesting to see that for those who worked within the format they usually do, size was secondary to what they had to say.

                                                                                         

Mithu Sen brought size into play with reference to sexual intercourse, where she ‘inflated’ the size of the photographed penis of a Classical European sculpture and played with its form. While appreciating Sen’s unreserved approach in tackling size matters, the debate was a non-starter for her visual presentation did not titillate nor repulse, nor make any statement on sexual satisfaction or lack of it, based of size.

 Art today is valued according to square foot area; akin to how property is sold, but large works are also difficult to sell for lack of space to hang them in, especially in private homes. Should either be a criterion for the artist to create, is a question that emerges from between the lines of Bhavana Kakar’s concept note. G.R Iranna addresses this by painting a large and a miniscule canvas, bringing out nuances of size. In the larger canvas [‘Qawaali’, 52 x 198 inches] the imagery is roughly sketched while in the ‘paduka’ [6 x 6 inches] he focuses on a small part of the front of the slipper with greater attention to detail in the painting of its form, which along with the perspective of the ‘paduka’, made it all the more interesting. Both canvasses were treated as objects/pictures of an era gone by and it is the small one that commanded attention, while the ‘Qawaali’ scene was bland by comparison. God, it has been said lies in the details and here one was inclined to agree.

 

 Manisha Parekh explored facets of a singular idea through myriad presentations. The humbler size is her forte which she chooses not to deviate from. Her use of watercolour and spontaneity of thought are handled adeptly in this scale and by contrast to Iranna’s ‘detailing’ that convinces, Parekh engages through multiple projections, expanding on the brief, by suggesting that scale could also be determined by the intensity of thought. Pooja Broota Iranna used the micro-sized staple-pin to build with, drawing on the urban-scape for inspiration. Her steely structures are ambitious for the material she erects them with, but they do not tower and intimidate as do the glass and steel constructions sprouting all over the country. She allows us to view the precision of the building process and hers is all the more attractive for the meditative qualities this embodies while real life sky-scrapers create chaos and cacophony adding to the stress of already frenetic lives. She thus makes a point in favour of a scale that is in harmony with the nature of one’s being.
 

This is portrayed perhaps the most convincingly in the sparing, delicate works by Niyati Chadha. White layered on white, with some minimal marks in pencil.  The play of light creates a subtle magic of shadows through overlapping layers of paper, depending on the angle of overlap and where the light source is. Could this kind of subtlety work successfully on a scale five or even ten times larger? The beauty and irony are that like Manesha and Pooja, Niyati does not even attempt it. However, if these artists had taken on a deviant scale, we may have had a better sense of the manner in which the content changes and how, if at all. 
 

Drawing from the story of Alice in Wonderland, where size becomes problematic when Alice shrinks too small to reach the key or grows too large to get her head through the door, the gallery concept note suggests that purpose determines size. N Pushpmala who uses photography, had technology at her disposal to enrich the debate by shrinking and enlarging the same image[s] but she presented two different works instead. While the smaller work engages the eye because the artist-protagonist looks straight at you, I am left wondering if this could have drawn the viewer equally, on a larger scale. Would I have been intimidated, or would the moment have been lost? This comparison/debate is however lost, for the larger work differs in content and unlike G.R. Iranna, does not shed any light on the debate of size.
 

Does size matter? It depends on what the artist is trying to convey is the inference drawn.  Jayshree Chakravorty supposedly looks at the earth as insects prowling beneath our feet might do. In the smaller works she merely examines insects in a semi-biological way, highlighting their jewel-like colours and curiously presenting them as integral to the paper they’ve been painted on but  the larger work with its squiggles and scratches makes no sense. If she had contrived for insects to crawl on the paper, their real-time marks may have revealed more than her own banal approximation. The larger work is double-sided and must have posed a technical challenge, but here size is not relevant; the artist’s engagement with the idea appears to be a hindrance to its evolution and disappoints on either scale.

Art these days is often portrayed through some kind of theme, which is interesting but does it serve art’s purpose? Differing from design essentially because there is no brief/theme, artists explore ideas close to their being, to reveal perspectives others may not see. The matter of size has not been debated conclusively and while this did not hinder appreciation of some of the work, the exhibition could have benefited by tighter editing. Simrin Mehra Aggarwal presents an obscurely painted connection between an object and its representation in her ‘small’ drawing of ‘large’ machine parts and T.V Santosh, who usually does large scale work presented only smaller ones.  It would have been interesting to see the change in content and texture if both scales had been side by side. Drawing inference from the works themselves is possible only where artists like Iranna have sincerely explored the concept or like Damani, Chadha and Parekh, who have worked within parameters of their own preferred scale.

 

Staple Fare - Pooja Iranna [review]

In an exhibition, titled, Of Human Endeavor: The Super Exposed City and the New Possibilities of Space, held at The Guild, Mumbai, from the 6th to the 22nd of August, 2009, Pooja Iranna presented drawings, digital photographs and sculptures that dealt with the theme of construction in the city. Over the past two decades, her work has evolved from fussy cardboard folds with thread to the meticulously ordered sculptures presented here, such as the series Converging/Segregating and Confluence, made with staple pins of the kind used in office stationery.

Iranna says that the haphazard construction projects around the city echo her “inner chaos”. However, this was not reflected in the show – what one saw here was a representation of symmetry and order. Digital photographs of scaffoldings and buildings under construction such as Untitled – II and III (2009) were virtually devoid of human beings. Despite the fact that such sites are invariably messy and disordered, Iranna’s carefully configured, clean, near-perfect photos ignored the chaotic nature of the urbanscape. Other photographs, like Reflective Energies – II (2008), showed glass and steel edifices elegantly converging in the sky. There was no acknowledgment of the debris and poverty-ridden streets that would have been below them. The acrylic-wax-pastel drawings Apex/Base I and II (2008) seemed to depict extreme close-ups of giant towers; the tiny bits of russet and deep grey in their crevices could have been rust. These black, white and grey works suggested the presence of corruption, but the point was too subtle to make an impact.

In her exploration of the city’s development, Iranna only focussed on externals. The fact that her ‘staple structures’ were devoid of people made them look particularly unreal. Gluing together stacks of staples – they fit together compactly to form rectangular pipes with which she created miniature steel edifices. Converging/Segregating – I (2008) was a 25 inches tall pyramid that would have been too perfect without the controlled striations and gentle unevenness of its surfaces. In Converging/Segregating – IV (2009), staple pins were organized to form box-like cells, evocative of both large multi-storey complexes and beehives.

Iranna’s choice of material for her sculptures was interesting because it suggested fragility, a quality we don’t associate with the building of gigantic edifices. The staple-works appeared delicate; adding to the appeal of what might otherwise have been representations of ghostly, abandoned structures. What was so unusual was that Iranna’s sculptures were made without altering her medium of choice – the staple pins looked like staple pins, yet they also looked like buildings.

For Iranna, using stacks of staples as building blocks was a meditative experience. Although she found their steely presence soothing, to viewers they appeared excessively sanitized. While her sculptures allude subtly to chaos – for instance, in the uneven surfaces of Converging/Segregating I and IV and the odd angles used to depict building blocks in Converging/Segregating – V – they did not capture the murderous world we live in. If art is meant to represent life, then Iranna’s show neither held up a mirror to it, nor offered a solution to its problems – it was too far removed from the realities of urban existence. Her artworks made for attractive conversation pieces but did not make a convincing artistic statement.