Playing god to the lepers in your head

Gitanjali Dang, the art critic of Hindustan Times, Mumbai writes on the latest exhibition by the acclaimed artist Sanjeev Khandekar.

To christen, What do I love when I love you, my god? Sanjeev Khandekar’s compellingly titled exhibition labyrinthine would be inaccurate. Despite its sprawling character, the artist’s recent suite of paintings, sculptures and installations, on display at The Fourth Floor, in Mumbai till December 16, stands cogent when placed within the larger context of his body of work. The artist’s recent projects have all engaged, at length, with the world of late capitalism/multinational capitalism and the present exhibition furthers this inquiry.                                                                            

Khandekar’s practice has in the past decade been characterised by and committed to a multiplicity of (ostensible) transgressions. When conducting an appraisal of his recent works it is of critical importance that one bear this in mind. His purposively trespassive proclivities frequently gain impetus from the incisive and often-controversial theories propounded by Slovenian thinker Slavoj Žižek. In The Parallax View (Short Circuits) series, Žižek has elucidated, and I paraphrase most diffidently, that short circuits which jolt the functioning of smooth networks, draw attention to their inadequacies. Hence short circuits become the subversive tool with which Khandekar harnesses the force of visual neologisms.       

Having extracted the name for his present exhibition from Confessions, St Augustine’s 13-volume autobiographical writings, the artist launches into the subject of political power play. Khandekar’s contention is that parochialism pandering world leaders, and their incalculable henchmen, are by way of rabid propaganda peddling god to those already deliriously enamoured of the shining beast of capitalism. The global milieu is dedicated to the cult of superfluities and faith/love is being misguided by the irregular and rapacious impulses of a ‘chosen few’. The ‘chosen one’ is how US General Boykin has introduced US President George W Bush to the pliant American populace.

The toxic cud, which the general has been feeding the bovine population and Boykin himself face the scorn of the artist in the painting Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!!

Central to the exhibition are the two collections of cupboards, titled Magneto Spheric Eternally Collapsible Objects (MSECO) and Disposable Objects. The cabinets enshrine the panoply of Hindu gods and goddesses and enthral them with the glamorous glare emanating from the inbuilt lights. The series titled MSECO contains fibreglass sculptures of deities who with their patina-laden bronze coats are suitably ‘antique’ in their appearance. In the case of Disposable Objects, though they contain a spectrum of deities similar to MSECO, the idols bear resemblance to the kitschly coloured plastic gods sold in and around temples that are tourist hotspots.

Here one would like to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that though the exhibition encapsulates miscellaneous mythological narratives, it would be erroneous reasoning indeed to pursue the myths and their iconography. Dwelling on the mythic narratives and by extension necessarily engaging with their inherent anxieties, such as hierarchy and chauvinism, would be a fallacy. By employing god as a metaphor for faith in general, the artist unravels the status quo, which in turn indicates that the quintessence of faith has been relegated to being a mere artefact.

In the recent past Khandekar has displayed a significant interest in the Internet and nebulous realm of virtual reality. He infiltrates the established context of the present exhibition by riding his hobbyhorse of virtual reality. To create a confrontational space he lassoes in the virtual mall ebay and then proceeds to tackle its new economics head on. Not only are websites like ebay repositioning faith; they are also in the business of fetishising spurious cultural icons and then coercing the consumer into accepting new hierarchies. The painting, Lipsmackinthirstquenchinacetastinmotivatingoodbuzzincooltalkinhigh walkinfastlivinevergivincoolfizzin, by offering the ‘Customers who bought this item also bought’ option highlights the menace of product-driven choices and defective demigod culture.

Though Khandekar repeatedly colludes with his creative energies to confer conceptual conundrums upon his works, the viewer need not necessarily combat their metaphoricity to gain access to them. What do I love when I… for instance, operates like a Critical Mass (a popular self-propelled rhizomal rider event), inviting the viewers to latch onto the exhibition at different points of interest. The visuality of the paintings, sculptures and installations that comprise the present exhibition, the sacred iconography, the nagging motif of the smear that spreads across several paintings or even perhaps the curiously longwinded titles, such as Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!! or Idiopathic Craniofacial Erythema, whose obscurity and undulating nature combine to replicate hypnotic mood of a mantra.

The presence of text in Khandekar’s paintings is very fraught and could be recognised either as a device that exhorts the viewer and hence is redundant. Or another rung, another possible entry point into the conceptually dense realm of his works. One obvious explanation, however, for the import of text could be that prior to arriving at his visual idiom Khandekar inhabited the world of letters.

The quasi-museal display arrangements used consistently find an unerring climax in Do you say, pusillanimous curmudgeon… At the pith of this installation lies the time-ravished antiquity of a yali. Standing tall on a stainless steel plinth, the yali has left behind a trail of crap, which in its own incomparable way stanches the wounds of parallax error.

Albert Camus had in one of his interviews remarked that Meursault, the disenchanted protagonist of his seminal novel, The Stranger (L’Étranger, 1942), is the ‘only Christ we deserve’. Since Meursault has been hailed as the crown prince of the dominion of the absurd, this sardonic and terse remark is often perceived as being a perplexing riddle.

One could take a cue from Camus and hazard the speculation that with What do I love when I love you, my god? Khandekar is implying, by way of caustic irony, that the new czars of the intemperate realm of post capitalism are the only gods we deserve. And for its part this burgeoning conglomerate is only too glad to play god to the irrational fears in our heads.

PS: The title of this review is a deviation of a line in the U2 song, One. In One, Bono sings, ‘Have you come here to play Jesus/To the lepers in your head’.