The New Gujarat Contemporaries- Part II
In this essay, JohnyML details the individual characteristics of the New Gujarat Contemporaries and also explains how these artists look at social development as a human catastrophe in disguise.
In the quirky drawings and paintings of the young artist Chirag Patel, one could identify familiar faces; faces of the artists and friends who often travel with Chirag to the wild life sanctuary in Gir Forests, Gujarat. His works narrate a story, rather a funny story of a pleasure trip on a jugad vehicle. The characters in these paintings are seen engaged in different activities; some take photographs of lions and other animals, some others copy the scenic beauty in their sketchbooks. Yet another group is involved in some kind of revelry. When they are asleep in their makeshift camps within the forest clearing, lions come out and start doing what these artists were doing during the day time; sketching, photographing, admiring etc. Some lions even try these artists’ clothes!
These fresh and energetic painterly narratives perhaps take their inspiration from the story telling capacity of late Bhupen Khakkar, who in his paintings had created a narrative, which now we attribute with contemporary mythological status. Amongst the New Gujarat Contemporaries, Chirag is the only artist who resorts to the narrative style but with a difference. The existential colors of Bhupen and Gulam Mohammed Sheikh are not there. Chirag’s works are more linear, illustrative and humorous. In his works the life of the animal kingdom spills over to the life of the human kingdom. Through these role reversals, the artist intends to tell us about his ecological concerns.
Art historically speaking, this is an artist’s effort to align himself with the narrative legacy of the Baroda Narrative School. However, there is a formal rejection of the conventions and expansion of concerns in Chirag’s works. There is something typical of Gujarat ethos in his works, which perhaps would not be able to emulate by artists from the other states. Chirag has been visiting Gir Forests every year and his narratives are based on these visits. Like in a contemporary fable, the lions and other animals assume the roles of the cultural icons of our times including Michael Jackson and Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan).
Each New Gujarat Contemporary artist has an individualistic language. Kajal Shah, a post graduate from the MS University paints ethereal images of houses that are hung from a serene block of elements constituted by varying tones of deep blue color. At times these houses are perched on a monumental cactus. Though her works have a surreal quality, they are not painted with a surreal intention. Kajal deals with nature and its influence on the contemporary human beings. Here nature becomes a protective cover for the artist though she does not paint the generic ‘landscapes’. The phenomenological sense of beyond is palpable in most of her works. The absence of human beings fills the paintings with a deep silence and it imparts a peculiar ‘sonic’ characteristic to her works. Her works are about hope, bonding and being together at the face of destruction. Could this be a psychological camouflaging of the immediate political events in the state?
It is in this camouflaged dealing with the political and social, the New Gujarat Contemporaries excel. Nimesh Patel, a graduate from the Amalsad College of Fine Arts, currently working at the Space Studio, Baroda looks at his land and its progress in terms of the changes happening in the urban landscapes. Nimesh, having excellent painterly skills, creates grids on his canvas surfaces and uses a predominant imagery of jumbled up optical fiber cables. The image of cables functions as a pointer to the economic growth of his immediate land and as a comment on the erosion of ‘human emotions’. He creates visual puns to facilitate a discourse on the disparities resulted by ‘progress’.
Vinod Patel, an already established sculptor too works on the cannibalistic nature of human progress. Social development though facilitates cultural changes, for him, it does not bring forth real cultural changes. Cultural changes are envisioned in his works as cannibalistic mutations that look desirable from the exterior and dispelling from its innards. Vinod finds his images from strategic mutations of automobile parts that are junked by the workshops. His idea is not to generate comprehensible forms through the welding together of junks. On the contrary, he creates nearly organic looking forms with glossy surfaces of automobile paints. These works take the onlooker from the familiar to the distant, and also from the normal to the deviant. It is in this mutated deviancy that Vinod gives his aesthetical accent. He engages the viewers with a critique of desire while inviting them to succumb to the alluring nature of these ‘sculpted’ objects.
Desire and aspirations of the human beings even in the midst of worst kind of calamities intrigues Somu Desai, an alumnus of Amalsad College of Art. He imagines life as a constant site of never ending constructions. The drawings that look more like architectural plans and blue prints in fact are carefully constructed visual mazes that embody the notion of building ‘progress’ at the cost of finer human feelings. Somu has two kinds of drawings; one done on Watergate paper and the ammonia drawings, a special technique developed by the artist. Somu considers his primary drawings as plates the way a print maker does, and transfers the same images on tracing sheet like but endurable papers using ammonia registration process. He reverses the idea of blue print being the primary source for building up architectures. Here he converts the already built in forms into a blue prints, an attempt to reverse the reality of constructions. The large paintings that Somu does with ink and acrylic colors have graffiti like iron structures that connote the middle class man’s ambition to build more. According to the artist, these images are the symbols of extended desires. While the ordinary man uses it for making his daily dreams a reality, those who are in power use the same technique to displace the human beings to peripheries.
Displacement is a notion that drives both Bhavin Mistry and Heena Mistry. Bhavin’s paintings rich with textural build ups show abandoned spaces. He creates ornamental spaces using textural blocks and they represent walls in the abandoned buildings and structures. The presence of human beings is obliterated from his works. Though the paintings carry a grim mood in them, Bhavin’s drawings are bit more surreal and playful. Bhavin envisions his environments as a site of constructions and the only animate things that we find are the JCBs, land movers and huge machineries. These machines are animated in such way that they look like surreal creatures ready to scare away the human beings.
Heena Mistry’s approach to the issue of displacement is rather romantic and moody. She looks at the narrow lanes and unused buildings in her surroundings and tries to capture the sense of loneliness in her works. Heena not only paints the already well recognized structures in history but also paints the unsung buildings in the local environment. She creates her painterly surfaces in such way that resonate the present condition of these abandoned buildings. Her attempt is to connect the past with the fast changing phase of the present. She does not make deliberate contrasting in her works in order to compare different architectures from the ancient, modern and post-modern times. Her painterly act is more like a person’s intimate intention to register the near-extinct memories.
Disha Jani, working from the Priyashree Studios in Baroda has a poetic approach to the environmental issues that she has taken up as her point of departure. She paints monumental trees against a sylvan atmosphere and even in their nakedness (without foliage) they look dignified and imposing. Under these trees, Disha paints goats that are transparent. The artist seems to look at nature that was friendly, loveable and harmonious. The transparent nature of the goats shows their ghostliness too. They look like apparitions from a golden past; an obvious reminder of the depleting condition of our environments.
Based in Baroda and working from Priyashree Studios, Nikita Parikh works more with the traditional Gujarati block prints on clothes. Her paintings rich with simple imageries try to re-establish the link between traditional crafts and contemporary painting. Nikita plays between abstract forms and figurative images and her main focus is to incorporate traditional knowledge into the modern forms. Though there is no revivalist attitude in her works, Nikita’s works are in a sense performative towards creating a surprisingly new ambience with the traditional and the modern.
Ambu Bhai Rathwa, a Bodhi award winner, takes pride in his life moulded by rural experiences. He works from the Space Studios and his images are mostly derived from his childhood experience spent in a remote village. The predominant imagery of a cock, the symbol of pride, colorfulness and power makes magic in Ambu Bhai’s paintings. Colors splatter and wind as if in an action painting and create tunnels and surfaces. There is a peculiar surrealism in Ambu Bhai’s works. His interest is to create an atmosphere charged with energy and enthusiasm.
Isha Diwanji, a final year MFA student in MSU, Baroda, at this stage follows last wave of the mediatic realism. However, her images culled out from the historical structures in Gujarat and the whirlpool like images that she creates around these structures look interesting as they in someway refer to the current socio-political situation in Gujarat. Payal Bahala paints abandoned boats. She paints them with an impressionist’s passion. She captures the many moods of these boats and a deeper reading could reveal their loaded connotations. Surat based Sanjoy Barot’s paintings are charged with direct socio-cultural and political commentary. He looks at the contemporary human being as a person who sells himself in the larger market. Sanjoy, through his ironic paintings deals with market and the desires generated by it.
There are many other artists who don’t find mention in this article. I would consider it as the limitation of my survey. The art critics and historians working in Gujarat would be able to bring forth more varied articulations of other artists.
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