Bridging Two Times
Manjunath Kamath, the noted young artist, after his highly acclaimed solo show in Gallery Espace, New Delhi, is on his way to mount a huge solo in London next year. www.artconcerns.com gives a close up picture of the artist and his studio.
Manjunath Kamath’s studio is a meeting point of two worlds, just like the place, Hauz Khas village, where the studio is located. There in Hauz Khas Village the ‘traditional’ cohabits with the ‘modern’ in a picture perfect fashion. No clash of civilizations is possible in this place as two differently paced times run parallel to each other; slow pace of a village and the breakneck speed of a milling metropolitan city.
One end, you find a basin full of wet clay and a table top with clay figures in their various stages of completion. On the other end, you see a sanitized and air-conditioned bay with sophisticated computers and other gadgets. Huge canvases hang on the walls waiting for Manjunath’s attention. An artisan’s workshop grows into a computer aficionado’s digital studio, from there it moves on to an artist’s atelier. Manjunath shuttles between these spaces, his fast fingers touching upon the clay figures, wielding brushes to daub colours on the canvases and striking some codes on the key boards.
A sense of magical realism is there in the air. The canvases are notated with figures that are the selected quotations from the lexicon of his memory. The sculptures are his quirky takes on history and quotidian lives. The computers contain his imaginations that otherwise might be impossible to express in conventional mediums. Manjunath does it all with the easiness of a magician.
You should be prepared for surprises when you are at Manjunath’s studio. When he removes a huge drawing from the wall, there you find another small drawing lying hidden behind it. “One drawing gives birth to another,” says the artist with a wink in his eyes. It seems that whatever happening around him become raw materials for this artist. “But beware, I just do not take things like that,” warns Manjunath who is fondly called ‘Manju’ by his friends. “I take things with a lot of discretion. I look at the history of an image or object before I absorb it into the repertoire of my images History is very important for me.”
While passing through the artist’s prism of interpretation history assumes various hues and shapes. According to Manju, history is something that makes things moving. “It has its own dynamics. An artist’s vision lies in finding out the dynamics of the history,” says Manju. For him, the dynamics of history is a continuous process through which things get activated. There is no negative history. Manju takes the example of Babri Masjid and its demolition by the Hindu fundamentalists. “Though the actual structure is demolished, Babri Masjid does not cease to exist. Its legacy goes on in different ways. Perhaps, Ayodhya itself is re-read in a different way after the demolition of the mosque structure.”
Hence, deconstruction of systems is an interesting part of Manju’s artistic process. He says that he is interested more in deconstruction than in construction. Perhaps the sparsely habited canvases of Manju exemplify his stand point. The vast flat surfaces in his canvases look like a field that is yet to be defined and determined by various historical processes. “The images that I build in these flat surfaces are just clues for interpretations. They could be the remnants of a deconstructive process,” says the artist. True to his words that last solo exhibition of his (Something Happened) in New Delhi had all those quirky interpretations of history that soon became the darlings of collectors.
A tangential look at history or approaching it with a ‘Thenali Raman’ point of view does not render Manju’s works just comical pieces. They are full of insights and wisdom. In his latest sculptural pieces, Manju juxtaposes the erotic images of Khajuraho with those of a village wrestling scene. He dubs both of them as ‘wrestling’. The quirkiness of his philosophy is quite palpable in these works. In another set of sculptures, he emphasizes the body parts of human beings and calls them as ‘Many Egos’. These titles become an entry point and guide at the same time. In yet another set of sculptures, Manjunath makes a series of busts of elderly gentlemen who look like clever and authoritarian. But Manju says that they are ordinary people with no noteworthy history but could become history provided their busts are casted in bronze. It is an interesting take on the imperialist history that provided us with too many busts of pirates and thugs. The same take is visible when Manju recasts the architectural parts of the colonial and Mughal era to show them as the ‘perfect ruins’.
Manju recounts the story of a snobbish friend who claims to be an entrepreneur and artist himself. One day this vainglorious man came to Manju’s studio. After looking at the paintings with a lot of flat surfaces, with not much provocation the friend told Manju that he too had used a lot of ‘flat surfaces’. “My first reaction was an emphatic ‘WHERE?’. Soon this friend explained that he was also an artist.” Manju says that he sympathizes with such fools who in turn provide cranky materials for his works. “This guy’s comment also becomes a part of my work at some point of time. You never know,” says Manju.
“When I look at my works I feel that I am telling a story. At the same time I feel that I am listening to a story,” Manju leans back in his sofa and sniff at a bit of tobacco powder from a small silver case. Enjoying the funny act of his, he smiles and says, “Perhaps this is an interesting habit I recently developed as a conscious effort to connect with my ancestral village.” Manju says that interpreting history becomes a necessity for him as the succeeding generations might not understand it the way he had understood his own past. “Art, in this sense, for me, is a bridge that connects not only two spaces but two times.”
(by JohnyML)
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