Between Mumbai and Kala Ghoda

Abhijeet Tamhane

The Mumbai Festival, on from mid-January will come to a close now, while the Kala Ghoda Art Festival will begin 2nd February. With the latter is regarded as a special event for the visual arts, one looks forward to meet Natraj Sharma and N.S.Harsha who will make public installations, or come across the YMA (!... young Mumbaikar art) by Prajakta Palav, Himashu, or the lesser known Parag Tandel. Most of the good Galleries in Mumbai are supporting at least one temporary site-specific project in the Kala Ghoda 'art district'.

On the same day as this art district starts its festivities, Gallery Chemould will have a second home, not far from but out of Kala Ghoda. Chemould's niche address for 42 years, 'above Jehangir Art Gallery', will now be paired with 'Chemould Prescott Road' (Above the lifestyle shop, Yantra). This bigger space will open with Atul Dodiya's show, 'shri Khakhar prasanna', homage to Bhupen Khakhar to fit the wits of the deceased painter friend.

Anju Dodiya as Angelina	A sculpture by Yom
	Click on the image to zoom

Atul Dodiya will have two shows, 'ek ke peechhe ek' in his home city. Last Monday, Atul's 'Saptapadi: scenes from a marriage (regardless)' opened at the Museum Gallery. Atul's use of Pop and Historical imagery as the warp and weft was notable again. The 'Photorealistic' (so they say) Dodiya that one knows of, has refigured after his Shabari sojourn. Dodiya does not take sides… he contemplates while telling a joke, or vice versa. Marriage: solid or fluid, broken or unsolemnised is under his scrutiny now. The narrative unfolds with Naayikas and Nayaks in each picture and they are caught unaware to play a protagonist for 'Wriggle's Believe it or Not' factoids as well as art-historical images. Dodiya's Naayikas include a betrayed wife, a widow, a muse, an ordinary-looking yet courageous companion, a vamp from Bollywood in the 1970s who in real life might be seen as a good wife, and to top it all- a witty take on the role that an 'equal partner' (maybe media) plays in our daily lives: the picture shows Anju, Atul's wife as Anjelina while Roy Lichtenstein's Dreaming Girl vociferates against her male partner in an act of self-realisation. As this well-knit show unfolds, the human protagonist disappears while the myths and mysteries of Marriage propagate themselves.

Yom, a French sculptor came to Mumbai and worked with a team of carpenters, all who made a living by making furniture. With Yom, they used wooden bocks and made hollowed squares with holes of differing sizes on each side. The process was taught and acquired, and the square took different forms with rounded edges and rectangular dimensions. The resultant object was an abstract sculpture that worked like a philosophical quiz about austerity and abundance. The diametrically opposite concepts had many collision points here. Tara Lal and Mortimer Chatterjee proudly presented Yom at their residential space in a private view.

Yom plans to return to India with a full-fledged show and, in France, he has proposed to make similar concrete hollows that would enable the dwellers of residential colonies to interact with their own colours.
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Three Diaspora artists : Aji V. N., Zarina Hashmi and Dilip Sur are showing  at Steinreucke+Mirchandani, Bodhi and Guild galleries respectively. Notwithstanding their geographical particulars, a striking similarity is, each of the three has recourse to drawing. Aji is reported to have said about his works, 'If you see elephants in water; it is elephants in water'. The statement, at best can be ignored as it is too humble an explanation for what you see. While Aji's charcoal-on-paper works enliven the dark- yet- moonlight night and the many mysteries it has in its might, His watercolours had a melancholy, of joys and sorrows that emanate from nature or the human condition.

Zarina's show looked like a mini-retrospective, a re-look at her graphic suites since a decade. Her recurring reference to home, cities and countries seems to have poised to take a new turn henceforth; although one would expect another suite as an epilogue to this 'home-nation' body of work.

Sur, with his forceful drawings and expressionist mode of painting, exhibited a melee of works that would lure a discerning eye to the charm of Bengali expressionist painters of yesteryears. Sur holds a teaching position at Royal College of Arts, London.