Ephemeral against grids

It Doesn't Bite,  the title of Susanta Mandal's exhibition at Galleryske (July to August 11), sinks only after a while when the initially striking and persistent fascination yields a note of apprehension which the artist reveals as well as comforts simultaneously with a lyrical humour and tender gravity.

The show that functions on the verge of different media and formal properties seems to conjure an intuition of our emotive experience of life in its multifarious processes. Essential here is the participation of movement driven by exposed mechanisms. The permeable complexity of the impact enhances thanks to restraint and finesse evident aesthetically, in the use of the materials and in the suggestiveness of the images.

Several sculptural installations by this youngish Kolkatan settled in Delhi use water and soap bubbles that continuously arise, soar or slide and burst in glass containers standing on precisely cut granite platforms against glistening metallic grids. The translucent, minimalist beauty of the substances between white and black partly interlinks the ephemeral bubbles with the hard metal but partly juxtaposes the same.

The structure elements partly encase or limit the motion and partly open up involving space. Thus, with references to the sky, alcohol and laboratory, the spectator gets an intimate aura of things happening between the organic or the bodily as well as the imaginative or belonging to aspiration and the mechanical, the scientific and the restrictive.

Lighting which remains an intrinsic part of the works appears to lend them a benign sensation of clarity, even loftiness, whereas the co-present shadows impregnate it with doubt, hesitation, perhaps fear.

Transparency and glossy shine reveal, as do the simple technological guts of the sculptures. And yet, everything there pervades - volumes are defined by lines, grids hold and open, metal and glass surfaces contain traces of colour, humble mechanisms turn into linear and volumetric forms, even residues of painting, while the constant movement behaves like a performance.

 If the mentioned works focus on alluring sensations, the apprehension dormant in them dominates the other pieces in diverse ways indicating a number of its sources. Another bubble sculpture accompanied by a pair of rough, shadowy scissors is still playful but points to the realness of the absurd proximity.

The 12 panel work with a prevailing drawing element — minimalist but subtly painterly, including the application of LCD light — comes to the edge of relief having included actual wires.

With bemused wit it evokes pain through the metaphor of dentistry equipment. An equally powerful piece that acts on the viewer in an emotively visceral manner is the jute sack suggestive of a body wriggling inside.

The impression between the eerie and victim-hood becomes dramatised and made immediate as one watches the video transmission of it in close-up. Even if the artist's intention to hint at the sensationalising role of the media may not be completely recognised, the effect remains tremendous again thanks to the minimalist bit highly charged handling of the so different now means.

Abstracts

Roopmat, the painting display by eleven artists from Indore, Madhya Pradesh (CKP, July 1 to 5), had a cultured but on the whole over-familiar character. Most of the predominantly canvas works appear to continue the predictable abstract lineage of the state. That lineage was evident not in references to its beginnings and Raza’s idiom, but to the currently established younger painters like Manish Pushkale.

Whether geometry-based, amorphous or gestural, whether minimalist of form or imbued with expression, they were hardly original with direct influences from elsewhere too, like those of Manisha Parekh and Yogesh Rawal, they betrayed an excessive dependency on designing. More interesting contributions came from Ritu Gujar, Sunder Gurjar and the figurally oriented, delicately evocative Amit Gupta.

Pleasing duo

The mother and daughter exhibition by Mini Naidoo and Mandira Naidoo (Kynkyny, July7 to 28) has two entirely different idioms which, nevertheless, share the evident need to please the viewer. Mini Naidoo does charcoal portraits of people and scenes with an accent on ethnic dance and rusticity.

The realism she employs shows an evident photographic basis, having been though blurred partly and partly sharpened in detailing while a certain simplification and regularity are imposed, all these elements imbuing the images with a conventional nicety.

Mandira Naidoo may be aiming at a more complex content with sensuality and gender unity related to cosmic forces and spirituality. All this, however, comes on the surface. The collaging technique with the use of X-ray film and glossy magazine pages remains subdued glossy rather than nuanced. The intended roughness of the silhouettes and the elongated motifs come close to designing.

Sweet tradition

Feet Kerala, the exhibition by B Murali (CKP, June 30 to July 9), had a vast number of canvases with divine images almost copying famous murals of the painter’s native state. The works seemed executed with some surely and knowledge of traditional art with its curvaceous and dynamic linear contours and centrally focussed, graded highlighting. They used the ancient ways, yet, towards a somewhat sweetened effect. The same increased in the realistic works with landscape, horse heads, gods, etc.