Art review

A series of drawings with single male figures and confronting pairs were partly pencilled with a delicate realism but left unfinished or divided into outlined white segments and blackened ones.

Expression of condition The recent Khoj residency at 1, Shanthi Road Studio/Gallery brought a dialogue between two young artists from Pakistan and India centred on the body as a container and expression of the human condition. The resulting display (February 27 to March 2) had a video by Imran Mudassar whose restrained simplicity was gravely effective. A poster-like image of a man’s back was shot in one focus registering the paper gradually tearing and coming off under the impact of small objects, perhaps darts, hitting it. The apparent lightness of the handling and a lack of the literal made this human target hold the helpless situation of people in that country and relate it broadly. The works of Bharathesh D Yadav sustained his dominant preoccupation with the body of flesh and aspirations. A series of drawings with single male figures and confronting pairs were partly pencilled with a delicate realism but left unfinished or divided into outlined white segments and blackened ones. Surrounded by flies, the nude bodies exuded an intuition of contrariness, of simultaneous lofty and physically repulsive sensations entrenched in our existence. His video “Kaya I” in a more complex manner dealt with such state of conflicted existential immersion over a changing sequence of images that suggested global and immediate depletion of organic resources and violence amid evocations of turbulent cosmic processes and their symbolic, spiritual representations, while faces of people crying in horror and despair recurred throughout. Whilst this work may have used digital design somewhat in excess, the other video “Room” was more cogent and quietly forceful. The repetition of slow, horizontal movement, disappearance and reappearance in a line of young men seemingly watching TV and a string of dolls, their limbs, mannequin torsos and fashion or aerobics scenes let one sense the phenomenon of passively accepted and corporeally manifested transformation of live people into likenesses of objects of commercial entertainment. ‘Mapping fragrances’ in the same space was another interesting exhibition by Medha from Mumbai.  The artist studied and recorded the community of zaya jasmine cultivators in rural Goa and Udupi. Adopting this beautiful and fabulously aromatic flower as the embodiment human work, relationships and emotions, in an installation, video and photographic stills, she paid a tribute to the people involved, the sumptuous decorations they make and the blossom itself. Whereas the low, white relief on the floor moulded of compressed yet plastic masses of jasmine blossoms and bearing a gold borderline map presented Medha’s loving gesture, the camera images oscillate between and integrated documentation with the intimacy of aesthetically observed but raw-gentle close-ups of richly garlanded vahanas, halls and ceilings as well as of hands packing, transporting and selling flowers. The whole may not have been spectacular or complex. Nevertheless, the very basic but sensitive approach conjured an effect of material and emotive connectedness between the people, the flowers and the festive ornamentation, the element of enchantment and desire to worshipfully decorate temples, churches and their icons further linking the often conflicted faiths in the rudimentary human plane. Words of (non)violence The installation by Animisha S Naganur (Samuha, March 6 to 8) was one more cathartic effort of an idealistic but disillusioned person to face our far from optimistic reality which, pervaded by extreme political and social violence, generates nonetheless equally potent notions of and appeals for peace, even if those remain largely helpless. The work took off from a quotation from Mahatma Gandhi in which he admits having nothing new to teach the world where truth and non-violence are eternal. Two walls in the gallery created almost a surround filled with multitudes of regularly disposed thin shapes of machine guns and revolvers cut out of newspaper pages with information about current terrorist attacks and other belligerent events of cruelty. Behind Gandhi’s words and the exhibition title “We made it!” could be seen next to a black cube carrying a three-dimensional revolver of newspaper but contained-restrained within a circle. The sheer lightness of the treatment and inclusion of a vast space enhanced the serious issue, while also underscoring the accepted normalcy and hopelessness of the deeply ingrained state, suggested already by the resigned tone of Gandhi’s sentence. The role of the written word could be recognised then as possessing, perhaps not a dormant potential of preventing or healing aggressiveness, but as at least a saving grace of awareness and wish despite of and against the unbridled, destructive force that living manifests itself though. Again, the installation may not have been formally earth-shaking; however, its sheer matter-of-fact directness in the constructing of the metaphor was successful and touched the viewer on a familiar, hence, strong level.