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Ore: The Core of Earth
Rajan M.Krishnan’s installation ‘ORE’ is going to be a new experience for art lovers in India. Half a million terracotta miniature figures constitute this massive installation, which opens on 19th January 2008 at Bodhi Space, Mumbai. It has got something more than the massive form, JohnyML finds that out
Around half a million miniature figures done in terracotta seen heaped at the storage space of Terra Craft Commercial Pottery studio near Kochi evoke the feeling of the British Sculptor Antony Gormley’s Field (1991-2003). A closer look reveals that these figures are not like the human figures that stare back at the viewer from the Field. They are more like votive figures having the forms of animals, trees, toys and the small little sculptures excavated from some pre-historic sites. These figures constitute an ambitious installation by the Kerala based artist Rajan M.Krishnan and this work will be presented along with his paintings and drawings at the Bodhi Space, Mumbai in a solo show titled ‘ORE-Substances of Earth-I’ on 19th January 2008.
“My work and Field of Antony Gormley are different in form and purpose, though a cursory view would make you find some kind of affinities,” says Rajan M.Krishnan. Rajan’s installation consists of one huge heap of terracotta figures that almost resemble terracotta hill from a distance. According to the artist they are excavated images that would explain the belief and cultural systems through which people articulated their lives in bygone years. “Though these figurines do not follow the archetypes strictly in form and content, they are meant to represent the essence of earth and other elements that constitute not only the nature but also the body and mind of human beings,” explains Rajan.
Titled ‘Ore’, this installation is an extension of Rajan’s paintings. In his paintings he deals with the landscapes that are immediate and remote, in a typical fashion. Using gray, brown, deep red, black and other somber colors Rajan creates a field of abandoned memories. These landscapes, though do not directly refer to the familiar, evoke a sense of cultural familiarity. Rajan, in his previous paintings had created this familiarity by the skilful employment of images like the abandoned factories, railway tracks, fenced lands, barren lands etc. Like in the works of Anselm Kiefer, history becomes a point of reference and historical memories become a field of debate in Rajan’s paintings. The pivotal debate Rajan tries to bring forth through his works is the use and disuse of cultural memories and sites. The notion of disused objects and dysfunctional implements works quite strongly in his works. Once the objects, landscapes and other visual codes taken out of the immediate use and familiarity, they seem to develop a special tendency to carry more meanings than the immediate cultural codes through which the contemporary life is understood, enjoyed, debated and appreciated.
“When I look at my paintings, I find each inch of the painted surface carries a potential to become an object in itself. My paintings, from a detached viewing, look as if they were constituted by small little objects. Once this realization came to me, I started looking at them not as paintings but as a composition of objects collected from the memory,” says Rajan. The impasto technique that he has implemented in building up the painterly surface also heralds an achievement of the artist as he uses the acrylic colors like the way one uses oil. “The thick application of acrylic colors is laborious and it is almost like arranging small figures on a surface,” explains Rajan.
This formally and visually overwhelming installation ‘ORE’ has a definite story to tell. For the artist, confrontation between the man and earth is not based on the arbitrary exploitation alone. In this confrontation there is a fair amount of faith and worship. Apart from the formal devices the helped Rajan to reach this installation, a cultural narrative ingrained in his memory from his very childhood, plays an important role. “There was a forest area near my home and children were not allowed to go there. But as children we used to break rules and visit this place. One day we found out some small terracotta figures scattered under a tree and we started playing with it.”
Rajan and his friends found more and more terracotta figures from this forest area in Trissur District, Kerala. Further enquiries revealed some interesting stories. “My research later on revealed that there were no potter communities in the vicinity for a long time. That means these votive figures came from elsewhere. From the local stories I gathered that, this forest used to be a route to another village and the local deity of the forest was ‘Anangan’. Those people who crossed this forest way used to bring terracotta figures from far away places and prayed to Anangan for saving them from wild animals. This might have happened for many years. The small statuettes that we found as children actually might have come from a totally different age and time,” recounts Rajan.
Hence, Rajan’s installation functions as a link to the past and its faith. He seems to say that the abandonment and disuse do not render objects out of cultural debates. This tribute to the past also comes to be a critique of the exploitative nature of the contemporary times. It is a contrast, in which a sublime contract of the human beings with earth and nature could be manifested. Rajan’s intention is to underline the erosion of the sublime in the name of progress. If Gormley’s people are made to look into the future, Rajan’s ‘figures’ are made in order to look at the past, present and future simultaneously to find the lost links; the installation gains the physical stature of memory, collective faith and a sublime social contract. The show also consists of two metal works titled ‘Tent’ and ‘Wing’. Apart from that there would be a video projection titled the ‘Making of Ore’, mainly shot by the artist himself.
People from all the walks of life were invited to participate in Rajan’s project. These people along with student volunteers from the art colleges in Kerala worked for almost three months to produce this installation. This participation of the people should be seen as a performative act in ORE as each uninitiated person did a votive figure remembering something from his collective memory. Many of them were touching clay for the first time and once they touched, they brought forth shapes that they never thought of existing in their memories. For the student volunteers, this performative act gave more scope to exercise their skills based on the votive figures. Hence, one could see from the miniature Ayyanar Horses to hitherto unseen of deities from the dark recesses of the minds of these students.
“ORE for me is more of a happening than making of a particular work of art. It is not intended at a gallery or a collector. I feel that this work would redefine the ‘collectible space’. The organic bonding between my paintings and this installation in fact excites me in a new way. This work is about a way of looking at history, understanding it in terms of humanity and re-articulating it in a new situation where the very act of making these figurines looks redundant,” Rajan observes. Perhaps, this shows a new tendency amongst the artists to look at earth as a field of articulation, not as a refined arena of cultural objects but as a raw mud path on which everyone has to tread, if not today, one day.
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