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An Incomplete Poetry
Oindrilla Maity visits a group show titled Surfaces and Textures’ at the Ganges Art Gallery, Kolkata and finds that the artists genuinely creates poetry in their works but they remain incomplete thanks to the defects in presentation.
Yogesh Rawal’s oblong canvas with about three-fourth of it painted in gamboge yellow, titled ‘Afternoon’, immediately reminded of Kamala Das’s poem ‘Malabar’. The sultry, dusty afternoon at the coast of Malabar ends in a warm golden radiance, which lingers long after sunset. The same luminosity radiates out of Rawal’s canvas which renders a warm, glowing afternoon –its all pervasive presence perhaps best rendered by the predominantly horizontal stretch of the canvas, featured in the gallery Ganges Art, at its latest show titled ‘Surfaces and Textures’ (29th September-15th October). The space below comprises of a darkness that veils the earth surreptitiously after sundown. The artist employs a number of media such as cellulose, resin and tissue paper on treated wood to bring about a mystic quality to his work. A dirty greenish mauve with painted over translucent tissues creased to form a marbled effect, cover the lower end of the canvas. A second untitled work by the same artist is which he uses the same materials is another abstraction in monochrome (he uses only white tissue paper juxtaposed with patches of black coloured paper.
A surreal inclination intrigues the onlooker when he stands before Shobha Broota’s crocheted work in wool, titled ‘Radiance 1, 2 and3’ in a series. The reflection on the glass of the frame becomes visible only when viewed with the peripheral sight. A direct gaze cast in a narcissistic attempt to capture a mirror reflection of the self on the polished surface falls flat as the image is thoroughly interrupted by the friction caused due to the rough surface of the crocheted wool. That sends out a complete disappointment to the spectator, repeatedly trying to catch a glimpse of his self, but in vain. His degree of frustration rises each time with his failure, eventually leading to an ethereal feeling. Shocked, he dwells between the real and the unreal.
Dattatreya Apte deliberately leaves a blank in the spaces for the titles of his works. Of the two richly textured pieces, the first one is an opulently creased life size surface, made of dyed and hand coloured pulp cast that creates an illusion of a mat on which he surprisingly creates an impression of a huge palm leaf whose countless diagonal creases share a stark contrast with the regular vertical ones on the mat. The other piece of work by the artist is one that gives the impression of wooden planks with minutest details impeccably rendered on hand dyed and coloured paper pulp cast to create the surface texture on them.
One habitually connects Manjari Chakravarti’s treatment and technique with that of Pollock’s action painting. The heavily textured surfaces are built up gradually by the repeated use of the thick paint. Manjari’s work are the result of nearly frenzied movements, that eventually lead to a labyrinth; a mesh of thread-like structures, juxtaposed with abstract forms along with identifiable images, occasionally surfacing out from beneath – photo copies of the well known women’s faces of the 19th century Bengali intelligentsia, who were the path finders and nonconformists to women’s emancipation, eventually asserting that their existence is no longer petrified. The layers perhaps bear some connection, however remote, to the very thought process of the artist and her own psychological association, and such conjectures are perhaps not irrational, either. The past and the present are perhaps abridged by one’s uninterrupted thoughts, as they know no barrier.
Mithu Sen’s installation (which does not bear any detail about the materials used in the catalogue. The only tag attached to it reads ‘Installation’ and no other necessary detail) comprises of deftly handled materials such as stuffed felts, wigs made into braids, synthetic cloth made into sausage shaped tubes and all attached to synthetic black fur (emulating hair) to jut out into space; the junctions where the braids meet the tubes are wrapped with textured pink organza, giving the impression of peonies. The entire assimilation eventually forms a bizarre headgear, which astonishingly does not perhaps belong to any specific geographical boundary. Although one might argue about its more obvious African origin, its ‘Indianness’ cannot be ruled out. In fact, to the artist, hair is a connotation related to a number of things such as stress, fear and anxiety – all of which bear a close association with hair.
Tapati Chowdhury’s sensitive handling of materials and minute observations (such as the mute trickling of dew, down the rails of the window that one often gazes at when one is deeply into one’s own self while musing), often turn out to be quite poignant and a feminine compliance, although less obvious, is characteristic of her pieces. Her work makes the onlooker identify himself more intimately and uninterruptedly, devoid of any other intervention. The pair of works at the show – ‘Lines and Drips’ and ‘ Doodle Baag’ predominantly share the same style and treatment – a labyrinth of threaded lines formed by tying their ends at different points to tiny metal loops, screwed into all the four walls of the hollowed wooden frames that also form a niche to the labyrinths. Over these lines she pours molten, coloured resin which, when dried, form a frozen look of one arrested moment. The most interesting part of a hollowed sculpture is perhaps its characteristic feature to allow the other side to intervene. Its (the sculpture’s) sharing a parlance with the background that keeps changing with the onlooker shifting his position, is what made Tapati’s work more intriguing.
Among the other works of interest were the young Rooshika Patel’s untitled works making use of an unprecedented technique of applying acrylic on a screen (made of silk), pertaining to the paint a crystalline look on which are embedded tiny, nearly microscopic specks of accumulated paint. The three canvases comprise of the three basic geometric shapes – the circle, the square and the triangle. Ranjith Raman (‘Led towards an Unknown Destiny’ and ‘Soul Resting’) intricately builds up his canvases with silken threads embroidered on cotton. Painstaking although the process is, its overall effect somehow seems a little too stodgy. Mona Rai deals with spaces employing glitters, golden and silver dust, stitches, and tiny balls of silken cloth, often leading to canvases that are visually rewarding. She never misses out on the details and hence often you would come across a small section of the canvas burnt out only to reveal a speck of a red satin that layers the canvas below.
Despite the individual efforts of the artists, which practically lead them to create poetry, it is perhaps the lack of consistency of the curatorial enterprise as a whole that lacks in spirit. Centered predominantly on the search for surfaces and textures, the search often gets impeded by the obvious placement of certain works as though just for the sake of filling up of space. Not all of the works are results of an intent search for surfaces and their textures. Also, where an avid onlooker would try and figure out the materials used, the tags along with the exhibits, products of gross negligence become thoroughly disappointing. The show calculatedly chooses to feature artists from outside West Bengal (barring only two) for an obvious cause – the newly formed galleries, mushroomed all around the city during the last ten years perhaps suddenly, almost overnight have felt an inclination for artists more with a schooling outside West Bengal, and Baroda being the most crucial to catering such interests. I do not mean to say this is an intervention (inviting artists from outside Bengal or simply categorizing them as ‘the other’), but what I would like to point out to is the fact that we are shifting our focus deliberately and nakedly from what we treasure. Are we not therefore forgetting our own self and taking refuge to a realm of gross neglect. The poetry, therefore, reached by the artists (in the show in particular) remains incomplete, and our thirst, unquenched.
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