JOIN USThe exhibition, ‘Constructs/Constructions’, which brings together 30 artists across-generations, dwells on the close relationship between the making and the manifestation of thought and ideas.
Focussing on a deeper interrogation of the urban condition of built structures around us and psychological constructs in the everyday, the art of these celebrated artists is a play between mental and material frames.
The exhibition, currently on at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), Saket, features works of well known names like S H Raza, Ram Kumar, F N Souza, KG Subramanyan, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh along with numerous others who have carved a niche for themselves in various genres.
Artists in the exhibition respond and create using a range of materials that are quite disparate and behave differently in their response to ‘space’ making. The exhibition explores the dual ideas of ‘immersion and emergence’, referring to the actual process of putting pieces or fragments together, to create a landscape that traverses the passage between the ‘observed’ and ‘remembered’ experiences, in responding to nature, architecture, place and time.
Several of the works invite viewers to enter into assembled/built environments with units carefully constructed for a specific experience. Like mirages, the creations create illusions, in an attempt to displace the viewer’s perception, while continuously asking for reorientation and a rethink on the ‘materiality of the worlds we inhabit’.
For instance, Gigi Scaria, Nataraj Sharma and Hema Upadhyay draw upon urban experiences of the everyday that affects us both physically and psychologically.
‘The Elevator’ reinforces the accelerated pace of urban living and its translation into the anxiety of speed, hurried impressions and even claustrophobia penetrating
our lives.
Upadhyay looks at the overpopulated Dharavi basti in Mumbai, perhaps the biggest slum in the world. The dense organic structure, titled 8x12 feet, marks the size of an average house in the slum. It emphasises the vulnerable proximity of the built structures with no breathing space left and yet, its presence in the city as a functioning living organism.
Sharma brings us the symbol of urban growth – a city always under construction and the sight of scaffolds and modular units.
Artwork from the Indian modern masters such as S H Raza and Ram Kumar, looks at the city and its constant transformation and the changing living landscape of places. The masters have looked at these structures to comprehend its architecture, respond to its built spaces, mark the growing absence of nature and often highlight moods of alienation, darkness and a mystery that engulfs city life.
F N Souza’s dark heavy paint-laden lines, frame man-made structures using an expressive impasto, capturing at times stark and brooding images of sites, cities and places encountered early in his travels to London, Paris and within India, primarily the city of Benares.
KG Subramanyan’s mural-sized painting with five similar sized canvases; Gulam Mohammed Sheikh’s portable structure that can be folded/contained in a large square box but can be opened to unfold as individual pages of a book or as a physical/three-dimensional structure that allows viewers to enter in, crossover and move in and out of its multiple sections.
The exhibition is sponsored by the Shiv Nadar Foundation.Constructs/Constructions is on at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), 145, DLF South Court Mall, Saket till December 15.
Timings: 6.30 -10.30 pm.