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.

 

nilima Sheikh and Shilpa gupta

Yesterday, I went to see Nilima Sheikh’s exhibition at LKA ‘Each Night Put Kashmir in Your Dreams’. Regrettably it wasn’t the ideal viewing experience as there were lots of people fussing around, taking photographs, so the lights were switched on and off and tables and ladders brought in and out of the space where the nine scrolls hung. However, I did not leave because having glimpsed the imagery and read some of the words, I had to linger, look and ponder. The colours were jewel-like, the imagery almost romantic even as the words reminded me they came from a deep sense of pain.

In the recent weeks I have been studying the art of Shilpa Gupta, through the book published by Vadehra, which seems completely at odds with these exquisite scrolls painted by Nilima Sheikh [and her team of assistants] and so a comparison was inevitable.

I like Shilpa Gupta’s in your face commentary, which brings forth a new media and new imagery that is intellectually exciting even though I am not exactly comforted by it. On the other hand here were Nilima Sheikh’s beautiful, painstakingly executed images and colours so soothing to the eye and heart. The pain was ever so subtly etched in colour and form with words of historians and poets printed at the back, telling you about the brutality behind it. The contrasting imagery of two artists simultaneously addressing similar issues, compelled me question Sheikh’s stance.

There is a very subtle depiction of pain. The words made it an experience I could feel but while the visual didn't contradict this, it also didn't represent the angst of a mother who said “My son never asked me, Ammaji, can I go to Pakistan and become a militant? He simply left. I wept.” What I saw was a deeply romanticized view of pain and destruction of a paradise that resides in memory. In a bid to preserve what little is left of the beauty there once was, Sheikh delicately presented this as fractured and disintegrating through the precise but scattered placement of fragile stencil prints of varying patterns and divides the panels vertically or otherwise. The grieving figures did not howl but gently wept even as they clung to trees in distress or clasped knuckles in prayer to a God whose existence it is imperative they believe in. Her grieving was not a public lament but a personal one that encompasses the collective.

Shilpa Gupta’s military camouflage, life-like and life-sized figures, performances, videos and bottles of blame do not allow for any romanticization. She is an artist of today, of the generation that has the guts to say it like it is. We have had plenty of skirting of issues and hiding behind the garb of spirituality, not coming out in the open with our views, but festering within, creating more harm than good. Sheikh however isn’t ignoring the issue nor is she engaging with it as all there is to see or say. Her Kashmir is filled with the beauty of carved lattices that sometimes depict the sky, sometimes the earth, the prayer rug and sometimes the space in between them. She reminds us of the tall shady Chinar trees, the jewel colours of lotus pinks, lake aquamarines and innumerable shades of green; of nature blooming in her resplendent glory, unhindered by human greed.

She made me long for the Kashmir I visited during summer holidays as a child. In 2003and later in 2004 I was invited by the Government to conduct workshops for crafts persons in Sringar and I remember being appalled and very disturbed by the armed military personnel that surrounded the Dal Lake or the road to Gulmarg. The shikara ride was just not the same, nor the walk around the Lake, nothing was. Her memories take me back to a time of happiness; they are what we can lean upon, to prevent further damage to this paradise on earth. Her Kashmir celebrates its splendour so that we may not forget. Even as she mourns the ravages; with splatters of red, vaguely resembling blood-stained foot-prints or inserting emotionally charged reds and purples in a soft pastel field; she does not focus so much on the destruction but gives us hope. Each scroll quietly asks you why should we only remember the pain and if we forget the beauty then what will sustain our endeavour to recoup.

If the scrolls had not been hung vertically but placed on the floor, they could have been prayer rugs, each a heartfelt wish of one who still believes. She wove a subtle thread of pain and memory or beauty, or anger, lament and hope. She spoke the language not of the fragile youth that have not seen better, who clamour for change without knowing what is to be changed or how; wrestling with the present without the capacity to envision a future. She spoke the language of humanity in all its humility, of one that has seen beauty, experienced it and also pain. So while pained by the present predicament, she cannot and does not give up hope.

In allowing us to revel in the beauty, she permits us take ownership. We may turn away from terror and blame, because we feel inadequate to address this extreme situation or take responsibility for, but when there’s beauty behind it, we are more willing. Sheikh knows that Kashmir, like everything else in life is not something that exists in isolation and that by omission or commission each one of us is responsible for the way things are today. Every single moment we experience today is a consequence of what we ignored yesterday, or took for granted. And when you assume ownership, then there is no question of pointing fingers, By re-creating the paradise we have nearly destroyed and are steadfastly ravaging to nothingness, she didn't just tells us what was wrong but showed us what we can re-claim.

This is the inherent difference that I saw between the youthfulness of Shilpa Gupta’s art and the wisdom of Nilima Sheikh as she urges us ‘Each night put Kashmir in your dreams.’ However, sometimes I did think that given the kind of communication over-load that we do deal with today, Sheikh’s message is a little too subtle, and that while Shilpa Gupta and her contemporaries could learn a great deal from the deeply finessed art of Nilima Sheikh, we do need some straight talking too.

An Ambitious Quest - Seema Kohli, video film Review

Dabbling in philosophy does not lead to Self Realization; here honesty is the best policy. Seema Kohli is primarily a painter who works on canvas, creating a filigree of forms mythical and imagined. Her decade-old preoccupation with Hindu philosophy is currently explored via film where she attempts “painting intangible aspects of time, energy and creation” through a video installation in two parts, projected simultaneously on adjacent walls. The film ‘Swayam Siddha - The Self Realized’ has been shown in Delhi, Spain, New Jersey and Singapore and received among others, the Gold award at the Florence Biennale, 2009.


At best, Self Realization is an ambitious quest for accomplished yogis and to portray this via video-art is a challenge. The subject is rooted in the physical dimension of living not divorced from it, but Seema has chosen a quasi-abstract route which makes the films virtually incomprehensible. Sanskrti shlokas are chanted soulfully by Vidya Rao and the young dancer Himani Khurana, in a contemporary black dress is graceful as she presents movement of time and energy. Attired in black trousers and T shirt, Seema too participates in the performance. Words are transposed onto crowded visuals of performers walking and dancing through fabric lengths with canvasses placed against walls and on the floor. Images from Kohli’s paintings are projected over their bodies and juxtaposed on the entire clip, creating a visual overload. Watching 6-7 minutes of two such videos simultaneously is tedious and the sub-text appears more like jargon than insights.

Seema uses symbols from traditional sources, where an earthen pot symbolizes the golden womb or ‘Hiranyagarbha’ and red foot-prints on the floor are reminiscent of the first steps a Hindu bride takes into her matrimonial home. Corrugated paper and bubble wrap are some contemporary elements she infuses into this film, but the concepts are clichéd. Time or ‘Kaal’ is presented literally through the colour black; or wrapping the body in corrugated paper symbolizes birth, then unravelling and re-wrapping in bubble-wrap it becomes re-birth. Some visual effects are quite dramatic and Seema’s serene countenance is sincere but for most frames she is covered with or dripping water or red and yellow paint, spilling onto the floor, evocative of blood and excreta. Unlike yogic lore, this isn’t an inspiring journey and as art, leaves wide open the question of art and what we present under its guise.

Art can raise questions and also our awareness of issues - political, religious, profane and spiritual. It can express the artist’s point of view, and angst within specified contexts. It can be an aspiration, provoke and also heal. It does all or any of this through a cultivated, individual vocabulary, but a pre-requisite is that the message be understood. The spiritual experience is essentially intangible and Seema’s task is challenging but having said that, if I am watching a work of art that is intended to present ‘The Self Realized’ then I am not interested in being entertained by a beautiful dancer or sonorous chants. The dance and music have to convey some insight and /or experience of some dimension that is referred to as ‘The Self Realized’.

A complex subject of much interest globally at this point in time, where material obsession and a sense of lack, as opposed to abundance has created violence and terror of great proportions, disrupting daily life, taking us deeper into ourselves; one anticipates some measure of insight that can shed light on the ancient wisdom of the Vedas to inspire hope towards peace and harmony in frenetic contemporary living. What comes across here is that Seema is caught up in the written word without reflecting upon her own experience of living enough, to present a clear perspective of her peculiar journey/experience or aspiration in this context.

The Self Realized is he or she who has achieved liberation. They are not bound by or within the drama of the world but fully conscious of mind, body and spirit and their connection to the super-conscious. They live in the bliss of awareness that the world is nothing but an illusion created through their own imagined mind. They have complete mastery over thought, for they have mastered fear. Masters have control because they have clarity of thought, because they have clarity of feeling and therefore of intent. This is Self Realization, a knowing that most of us are seeking.

Those who have evolved enough to understand the meaning of Self Realization, recognise the merit of deep reflection and internal reference of each and every experience and thought or feeling therein, towards mastering their minds. You do not have to retire to the Himalayas, but you do have to retreat within yourself more and more till such time as desires diminish and with it the pangs of the world and its illusionary drama. Self realization may well be an ‘aspiration’ for the artist, but for the master it is but a ‘process’, evolving through living, something you will acquire if you live with utmost honesty to yourself. Neither this, nor quietude or clarity, all of which are a pre-requisite of the self-realized, is even glimpsed in this film. What we see instead is a confused, meandering mind, not a master of it.

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.

Inhibiting Threads [review - Shivani Aggarwal, Gallery Vi-Art, New Delhi]

I walked into the newly renovated Ashna Gallery [previously Viart] on a hot April afternoon to a sparse offering by Shivani Aggarwal, of her recent works ‘Close Knit’. The painted photographs in off white, greys and whites with minimal use of red are neither comforting nor alienating. In fact the problem is that they do not engage you for their own sake but in their apparent incompleteness compel you question. 

Shivani not only paints and photographs the textiles portrayed in her work, but creates some of them to further work with. In ‘Pin-cushion’, the crochet piece held by fingers pointing at us, has been constructed by the artist and I wondered why she does not make the textile rather than paint or photograph it, but this is how she draws your interest and reveals that she is not concerned about making the fabric, but uses the process of construction and de-construction, where threads entangle, support, entwine, loop and sometimes fall apart, as references for those thoughts that occupy us in the relationships we engage with. The fact that she uses textile as the metaphor with which to elucidate this point is insightful, for etymologically textiles refer to the main body and defining this beyond the physical form, is essentially done through relationships
 

Living in the urban metropolis ofNew Delhi, Shivani as as much a part of its cacophonic frenzies as the rest us. This is what she seems to address through the relationships she encounters that reflect its morals and ethics or lack of, not in presenting their physical reality but disassociating from this altogether. The emotion seems to compel her expression more than the physical dimension of these relationships, implying that it is not a singular association, but a general state of being that is articulated. While the works are not entirely abstract, for she presents some physical attributes through threads, fabrics, implements and partial representation of the human body, they are not rooted in any physical space or context.

 

 In a large untitled work that occupies a whole wall; on its pale ground Shivani places a ‘potli’ of white fabric containing some unruly red coloured threads, above this, a semi-knitted red fabric hangs from apparently nowhere and on the right of the bundle, at a lower level, lie a pair of bent knitting needles that have miraculously knitted a few lines, again in red. The use of Red is evocative of strong emotions. Trying to contain unruly threads in a stark white bundle is a challenging endeavour. The bundle has been tied with ease; aside from a few threads that peep out of the ties, there is no sign of a struggle in containing them. While Shivani says that the works exhibited through ‘Close Knit’ are formed as a result of contemplation to understand, analyze and resolve thoughts and situations, this is not visually explored or presented in a way that displays any characteristics of the resolution of emotions. The implication therefore is not of dealing with the feeling and therefore containing it through a detached stance, but suppressing or controlling it and even so the bundle is too neat to convey this either. Can unruly thoughts ever be contained? 

At the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, the colour white is predominant in the lace or crochet work. In ‘Lace 1’, we see a series of six works where a body sews white lace onto itself, with red thread. The lace is readymade, easily purchased from the lanes of Lajpat Nagar market. Lace is intended as a metaphor for social affability and adornment, where regardless of the way you feel, this must be not be displayed when interacting in the social arena. The use of white here is not particularly evocative. As in the other works, there is an apparent hesitation to speak freely of the struggle in dealing with complex emotions or of the discomfort in suppressing them. She paints knitting needles, pins and cutters to express the process of construction and deconstruction, yet the cutters don’t cut, needles don’t knit and pins appear to puncture the skin only superficially. The inference drawn is that the artist speaks of either not being able to inflict pain, pierce right through the skin/surface of the body or relationship or that somehow, the idea or person is disabled from doing so.

All the works on display are very orderly and neatly painted; everything is carefully controlled, even at its most chaotic. The artist’s comfort level in textile making is clearly not enough to induce a creative presentation of her experience and therefore she resorts to using it as a metaphor, while photography and painting allow a certain comfort in representation. Given the underlying meaning of a desire to contain rather than inflict pain, this may however have been a useful endeavour. Engaging with the repetitive, almost chant-like, painstaking mechanics and tactile materiality of knitting or crochet would absorb and diffuse the intensity of emotion, calming like a mantra, thereby achieving a certain sense of detachment, but sublimation without excoriation does not appear to be the intent either. 

The work is subtle and does not have the visceral appeal of much of today’s art but sensitively leads deeper, questioning the very act of creation. Should this be about creating a more wholesome and fulfilling life, where the artistic practice becomes a means to resolve feelings/emotion and move beyond them? Or is it about creating for the sake of play, to nuance age-old dilemmas in a novel way. Which element of creativity should be valued, the artistic practice or human evolution? This point of view or any other is not clearly articulated and like the bent needles that can barely knit or pins that don’t prick, Shivani leaves us intrigued but is unable to convey what she feels.