Between concept and evocation

Rahel Hegnauer, an artist from Switzerland, participated in this year's Khoj residencies followed up by a stay at the Open Studio in Bangalore. She presented her work done during these months at the last-mentioned venue (January 25). The project which has a number of aspects concerns her responses to the pollution of the river Yamuna in Delhi. Rehel who in her country deals with ecological issues adopted locally her mainstream conceptual approach where research and documentation mix with artistic interventionism in reality and a more evocative part.

 The show had reports of chemical analysis of Yamuna’s water on entering and leaving the capital. However shocking and frightening the data and however convincing the narration about the artist’s sincere probe, the material was self-limiting. A bamboo bridge was built by Rahel jutting into the river, the artist having positioned it so as to induce the viewers to observe simultaneously the trashed side and the still relatively pastoral one.
A scattered multitude of photographs from modest, make-shift settlements did engage the viewer thanks to the right blend of frank, almost brutal roughness and natural empathy that let her capture human vivacity and ethos, even its specific beauty. The best contribution to the whole was the video titled, like the entire project, “The hidden hyacinths of the Yamuna”.

 In quite slow motion, the vista of the river and its banks appears to be presented quite in the manner of picturesque landscape. For a while the meandering course gently pulsates throwing up spectacularly sparkling froth, boats leaving behind dynamic trails on the surface punctuated by tiny colourful accents. It is only on longer acquaintance that the aesthetic splendour reveals its ominous sources, as one can realise that the certain overstress is generated by the pink hues of industrial effluents, the water is thick of dirty oil and the flowers are rotting or turn out to be pieces of refuse. An eerie sort of enchantment and yet underscored by clarity as well as by warmth and compassion.

The woman in a man

Ambuja Magaji, a young artist from the city, showed her authentic concern with reality as well as courage both with regard to the choice of her subject and in terms of the contemporariness of her means. ‘Body Desire’ was an interesting multi-part video installation (1, Shanthi Studio/Gallery, February 1 to 2). Although she refers to the ancient concept of ‘Ardhanarishvara’, Shiva who is half-Parvati, which would suggest that the work explores the permeability of the female element in men, the actual material revolved round the specific spirit of men who dress up and behave like women, somewhere between the traditional hijra phenomenon and the present-day transvestite.

 The most absorbing was the simultaneous combination of a video showing a young man talk about his feelings and experiences and another piece in which another one is shot doing make-up, posing and dancing.
Despite some lapses, like the excessive use of popular designs composed of multiplied film takes, the images and the voice had much rough and somehow touching emotion and naturalness under the masquerade, if not innocence within the matter-of-fact references to commercial sex and such. Although the work perhaps needs some perfecting, it does offer meaningful material and, more importantly, carries a harsh but all the more convincing evocation from a world that is little known yet very real, and whose aspects pervade so called normal psychology.

 Whilst the viewer understood the message behind one of the videos being displayed through a red-twine-bound chair and behind the other piece with the chair floating as if lost in the no man's land on water, the arrangement was somewhat to straight and not always original.

The employment of a degree of kitsch went well with the sources that contain both crudeness and soft feelings. It made sense also in the three images in light boxes where digital effects under blur with a slight addition of painterly ones served towards a similar evocation. Whereas one appreciated the stronger impact of the piece with wigs, the other ones with a shadowy figure doing make-up may have benefited from a more careful distribution of accents. Whatever the reservations, one will look forward to Ambuja’s future engagements.

Tentative contemporariness

 Four young painters came together to honour the memory of their mentor Nanjunda Rao at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, the institution he headed for many years. Their exhibition - ‘A tribute to the legend’ (January 24 to 30) suggested that the artists strive to deal with issues of the human predicament and to formulate them more often than not through contemporary

Aesthetic means. The outcome, though, was sincere but somewhat hesitant and relying on a few rather familiar ways with figuration and composition. The least exciting in its decorative character was the work of Kantharaj N with its almost realistic landscape motifs among a scattering of kaleidoscopic patterns. Madhu D, Sudhir B Teli and Pradeep Varma on a slightly bolder note combine a schematically realistic or a more stylised, essentialist figuration with city map motifs or pronounced machinery fragments, One appreciates the intentions but wishes them more seriousness.

Contorted

M R Balaki, a senior painter from Dharwad, depicts rustic ethnic types and animals somewhat like puppets whose mannerist facial and bodily contours are filled by ample linear, geometric and patchy patterns (CKP, February 1 to 6). Perhaps aiming at an expression of bonds between people and their dense spaces, besides trying to be good-heartedly humorous, the impact remains quite simplistic.

Amateurish gamut

The ‘Pratibimb Reflections of Life…’ show by Umesh Shebe (Alliance Francaise, February 1 to 2), may have spoken of the artist's joy and appreciation for the country's landscape and rustic inhabitants. Its form, however, proved a very amateurish mixture of different, if equally conventional, idioms from design-like abstracts to schoolish realism and to mannered Modernist native stylisations. Better effects were achieved sporadically when the painter restrained himself to tightly abstracting scenery.