Travelling lines
The new exhibition at Tasveer (January 9 to 23) brings photographs by Canadian David Trattles. Titled “Out There”, it portrays sights and types from the country’s remote and little known regions. The artist who constantly travels by bike seems to be looking at his subjects simultaneously through the sense of being on the move and of establishing an informal but quite intimate contact with the individuals he meets and their spaces. Thus, his prints in a greater or just indicated measure combine a vast, receding perspective that is emphasised strongly by the near-geometry of parallel horizontal rhythms and stretches of diagonal motifs with mostly human figures seen from close on. Avoiding any urban environment, perhaps for its stereotypical glamour and put on attitudes, he chooses to capture ordinary, marginal people to discover un-pretended, authentic life in the raw with its prosaic sides as well as its characters, emotions, liveliness and fantasy.
The whole certainly convinces and often touches thanks to its genuineness. The devotion to modest themes maybe consciously dictated the black and white monochrome along with the use of well-established, classic or even old-fashioned compositional ways. The effect, yet, oscillates between very good and over-done. His wide-angle panoramas are best when loosening up and to a larger degree blending the vanishing point element with foreground silhouettes shown as reacting to one another in a scattered yet linked dynamism and titled view-points. Very ably Trattles adds here some misty areas conjuring a mood of joy, lyricism or dreaming. Similarly, among his group portraits, one likes the calm, personal frankness and warmth of the simple, static, immediate takes of single people as well as the vibrant, dissipating groups that eventually integrate. Less successful are the images where many figures are lined up regularly or those set up against equally regular backgrounds.
An encounter between art and design
“979 an extravaganza of art fashion and design” was an encounter between paintings and designers inspired by those conceptualised by the gallery Sumukha (January 11 to 13). That art and design grow from and relate to the same reality and its culture is an obvious truth, both having then certain similarities and both bringing better or worse aesthetic results dependent on individual talent, imagination and integrity. Of course, design has to be decorative. And of course, good art should not be that or only that. What happened in the show for which mostly formalist and often not high-level paintings were chosen, that irrespective of the quality of the designs triggered by them, the mere decorativeness of most of the art works proper became uncomfortably evident.
The nature and the appropriateness of the relationship differed. The tightest could be observed between the contemporary brightness of Krishnamachari Bose’s canvases and the clothes by Rohit Bal which over the black used stripes of dense gatherings of colourful fabric, the simple elegance of the striped bowl by Suman Sharma and Arun Kullu adding to the impact of a gracefully and strongly interpreted core. The elements of popular taste and iconography in Ravinder Reddy’s head became translated playfully and imaginatively by Manish Arora and Kavita Datta through the use of applique and ceramic votive eyes. The intricacy of Laxma Goud’s graphic strokes was picked up and transposed in a classic manner and with fantasy by Abraham and Thakore and Alex Davis. Prabhakar Kolte’s minimal abstractions brought a sober but light restraint in Namrata Joshipura, while Ravi Kumar Kashi’s advertising-based canvas echoed in the natural topicality of Jason Cherian and Anshu Arora Sen’s dresses. Jogen Chowdhury’s charcoal drawings were appropriated elegantly but somewhat literally by Rajesh Pratap Singh and Viki Sardesai in a play with black surfaces and embossed or silver quotations from the former. The obvious pleasantness of Anjolie Ela Menon and Jayashi Burman echoed in its direct use in clothes and bags. The easy cuteness of Paresh Maity strangely was the source of fine, unpretentiously lively clothes by Sabyasachi Mukherjee.
Kerala mural-based
“Sita-bhoomin putri and other stories” curated by Latha Kurian Rajeev was an exhibition of paintings by artists from Kerala who rely on the old mural canon (CKP, January 5 to 10). All the participants are well equipped technically and know the related iconography and styles. The best appeared to be the most faithful images by Sadaanandan which not only evoked the tight, vivacious intricacy of the originals but also the smoothly highlighted sensuality of limbs characteristic to those.
The remaining painters either tried to provide almost exact copy-like works that varied slightly from the sources by arrangement, details and execution, like the popularly contemporary sweet facial features, or tried introducing new compositional elements intended as striking but ending as merely formalist. Otherwise they stylised classic motifs in a whole that supposedly, but in a mannerist way, related to the current world. One doubts whether this direction has validity beyond the decorative.
Mannered easiness
Sreekar Balasundaram, a city surgeon with a diploma in painting, had a solo exhibition at Ethos (January 3 to 6). If his second profession must be giving him relaxation and pleasure, it would be difficult to take it seriously. His many Ganesha images looked rather predictable while being somewhat messy in their rendering. The artist follows an over-familiar range of surface-bound manipulations subjecting the iconic shape to a rounded simplifications or abstracted, geometric angularities under smooth pigments, patchy or parallel ones. Sporadically he may add a dose or realistic contouring or allusions to urban architecture, otherwise giving in to the allure of sacred mists or indulgent abstract grounds. The effect remains facile throughout.
Textured patterns
The paintings of Nasar Chap from Kerala (CKP, December 27 to 29) may be aimed at evoking scenery moods and personal or environmental issues and struggles. What comes through, however, is just a design-oriented indulgency with strong but loud pigments over a heavily textured ground composed along fairly obvious, un-nuanced linear vectors and curling patterns. One would advise more focus on sensing rather than stating situations.
