That is expressed simultaneously on an abstract-evocative level and a somewhat literal one – through figuration. Although known for her printmaking practice and teaching, her temperas strike as quite free and painterly, graphic qualities entering with the contouring of bodies but diffuse largely over the flowing pigments. The elemental part of the imagery comes as a boundless flux of amorphous, dynamic substances that meet, interpenetrate and blend. Within a range of red-yellow, green and blue, plays, indulgently perhaps, with waving, spreading and coagulating forms that expand ephemerally in translucence, solidify over sand-like textures and shallow eruptions to turn opaque and more defined when surrounded by stroke-resembling trails of colour or its negative white. Although very consummate technique-wise and devoid of any loudness or sugary tones, their impact nevertheless does not rise beyond the rather predictable pleasantness. The woman’s immersion in basic forces and substances of may be an eternally valid theme, but it would ask now for a contemporary expression. Instead, Sultana relies on a dated and over-used repertoire of Modernist inspirations. This becomes yet more evident in her way with figures. Delicate, sinuous and sensual, they seem to repose within landscape, float on water currents and soar in the sky – compared and equated with birds. The artist is silhouetting them gently, however clearly, according to an old-fashioned stylisation that harks back to the popular formula of more than half a century ago. Her temperas merge semi-transparent water colour effects with the saturation normally characteristic of oils. Painting on vast sheets of paper which are then pasted to canvas, she combines the intimacy of the former with the scale of the latter. Even of striking at first glance, the compositions remain merely nice.
Barred surfaces
M Pavan Kumar is a young local artist with a post-graduation from Bangalore University. His first solo exhibition at Sumukha (August 29 to September 11) prove a sincerity of intent and considerable skills without yet a sufficient maturity and power. His “Urban Existence” works in mixed media on paper look like good aesthetic compositions that well balance roughness and vivid lyricism. They are structured, however, around the motifs of windows with geometric bars and more ornamental grids. Sporadically evoking a layer of the external world and the presence of the interior, in most cases the artist focuses on the flat surface where the grid becomes predominant and holds within its frame the impenetrable opacity of the outside and inside hues.
The viewer does intuit that the painter is aiming at an evocation of the intangible edge where the objective and subjective words confront and impact each other. For that to become truly effective, yet, the works would have had to be stronger. In some instances they tend to dilute over a somewhat decorative handling. The large drawings in pencil deal with values and personal innocence seen against the corruption and commercialism of current reality. Their recourse to the naivety of popular signage and didactic images has its logic while revealing sincerity, but again, without the aid of powerful workmanship, it becomes somewhat limited by itself.
Tangible expanses
The French photographer Nicolas Chorier has been shooting India from the uniquely inventive perspective of a flying kite. His literal use of technology which enables him to view and compose images seen by the camera attached to a kite, becomes an evocative means. His aerial views offer views of monuments and spaces so large that they can be experienced only fragmentarily from the ground.
Simultaneously, taken at an angle, the images capture multitudes of objects, animals and people whose corporeality remains essential. Thus, the prints enhance one’s constant but rarely evident intuition of the country’s scale and density.
The works brought to the CKP by Roli Books (September 4 to 7) include several extraordinary images. Especially effective are those which derive their aesthetic finesse from rudimentary reality properties. Such are the sensuous pictures with massive bodies of elephants at bath shot against the vastness of rippling live water.
Chorier is at his best when capturing the rhythms and compact, animated textures of frothing water waves and fishing nets, of tea shrubs, of human gatherings at sacred places, etc. The expanse remains there, not just a backdrop, but the matrix of the living crowd.
Some instances, by contrast, may appear merely documentary or indifferent. Whereas the prints within the subdued blue-grey gamut can be powerful and lyrical, some other with more of the computer-relying brightness turn slightly surface-bound.
Cute rusticity
Basuki Dasgupta seeks inspiration from his childhood memory of Bankura’s terracotta temples and rural folk. This may be more visible in his recent paintings at Kynkyny (August 28 to September 15), but becomes further diluted under the artist's wish to please the not so discerning spectator.
Against arches, pillars and multiplied plaque backgrounds, he paints cute puppet-like figures of people, animals and deities. As the architecturally derived structure becomes a decorative design, the living shapes loose their link with the village turning into a comfortable urban fantasy.
The muted not relief impact evinced by the textures does not loose its loudness.
