Life | Quirky Sculptures Abstract Spaces

October, 2004

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QUIRKY SCULPTURES ABSTRACT SPACES

Published: Volume 12, September-October 2004

Whether or not art finds its place as a tangible asset within bulky portfolios remains to be seen. Still, the event gave would-be connoisseurs a chance to savour a Jehangir Sabavala and Sakti Burman over canapés and cocktails

Experimental art that defies description, painted prints and mixed media offerings… Anupa Mehta catalogues the exhibitions that brought a dash of colour to the monsoon greys

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Statics
Sudarshan Shetty
Chemould Art Gallery

[Sudarshan Shetty]

Statics, Sudarshan Shetty’s new exhibition, comprised small but entirely edgy sculptures. Quirky and glossed over with a contemporary sophistication, these works were in keeping with Shetty’s desire to ‘challenge modes of viewership without resorting to high seriousness’. Beautifully crafted fruits stuffed with sharp objects and delicate fish bowls set with resin and unexpected material, displayed, as always, a high degree of craftsmanship and meticulous attention to detail.

Among Indian artists who have sought to free Indian sculpture from its weighed down formal approach, Shetty has, over the years experimented with found objects in Duchampian mode, and a variety of mediums. “The intent is to create an emotionally charged experience through the juxtaposition of different objects. I put together objects that do not hold the same meanings that they may otherwise hold. The coming together of meaning creates an abstract space.”

Statics communicated a pristine emotion; the tableaux of second-hand furniture – Irani chairs with marble eggs, a centre table set with antique guns and a grandfather clock with a ticking heart – could easily be read as an altarpiece. Frozen in time. The underlying static spoke of a rare kind of poetry.

Gulammohammed Sheikh
Presented by The Guild Art gallery at The Museum Gallery
Academic, educator, curator, thinker and painter: Gulammohamed Sheikh is among India’s celebrated artists. His recent exhibition of digital collages, painted prints and mixed media work, Mappings, is additional proof. Drawing from ancient Buddhist, Judeo-Christian and medieval Sufi traditions among a vast array of eclectic sources over millennia, and using digital technology, Sheikh traverses cultures and time zones to recreate a fascinating tapestry of images. The rich and teeming visual narrative of the Mappamundi Suite, reiterates that events and time gain additional importance only in the mind: there is, as we know, nothing linear about occasions, history and memory. Sheikh’s re-mappings and re-visitations, besides creating new histories, highlight his interest in mapping ‘different temporalities’, seen over the years circumscribed within the interiors, and the Tree of Life in his paintings.

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Banking on art

[Gopal chowdhury]

Call it a marriage of convenience or otherwise, but Ruminations, an exhibition of paintings ‘gleaned from collectors and patrons’, went down as a clever new strategy conceived by Apparao Galleries(in association with Citigold Wealth Management and HDFC Mutual Funds), to flog old art. Whether or not art finds place as a tangible asset within bulky portfolios remains to be seen. Still, the event gave would-be connoisseurs a chance to savour a Jehangir Sabavala and Sakti Burman over canapés and cocktails at the Rooftop Rendezvous.

Indian Tapestry
Pheroza J Godrej is among Mumbai’s original patrons of art. It would be only natural then for most of Mumbai’s who’s who to show up at the opening of a new chapter – ‘India Weaves’ – in the life of her gallery Cymroza, located in Breach Candy. A state of the art textile furnishing store, ‘India Weaves’ opened formally on August 2. Besides cushion covers et al,

[Badri Narayan]

the tiny store stocks ‘extravagant silken delights’ that hark to the ‘China Man’; strictly for connoisseurs with no budgetary constraints.

Artistic Concern
Concern India Foundation held its fourth annual Monsoon Show of Contemporary Indian art at Artists’ Centre. With everything under rupees 40,000 the show offered a chance to acquire good art at great prices.

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