REACHING OUT FROM THE INTERIOR- IN TOUCH EDITION 6 PART I
As Part 1 of our series featuring In Touch Edition 6, we appraise four powerful solo shows that bring to the table different aspects of interiority and reflection.
The Tamil-Nadu born legendary artist, R M Palaniappan’s first encounter with the cinematics of WWII in 1970 left a very strong impression on him. He remained fascinated with the dynamics of the flying machine. The visual vocabulary of this experience stayed with him for decades recurring as maps, grids, and aerial terrains in his paintings and prints. He was always engaged with scientific thought and mathematics; however, these disciplines also found their best expression in his work as a painter.
Nature Morte’s contribution to In Touch 6 are Palaniappan’s new paintings that are part of their current show at their Vasant Vihar gallery, titled Grammar of Randoms. However, they have decided not to include his prints as part of the exhibition. Instead, the show emphasizes his
acrylic paintings from 2019 and 2020, which demonstrate a ‘subtle’ yet highly ‘sophisticated’ use of colour and a continued interest in ‘diagrammatic notations and graphic strategies’. Through these works, Palaniappan outlines deeper considerations of time, space, and movement, and attempts to transcend the linearity of the physical world as experienced by him.
Meanwhile artist Baaraan Ijlal, explores the haunting poetics of the vacant leaf-strewn city streets, in her solo at Shrine Empire for In Touch Edition 6. Titled: Locust- Eaten Moon, Diary Entries of 2020, it explores a painterly translation of her photographs that she took during the onset of COVID last year.
“The virus arrived in winter and grew with the advent of spring, giving the poet’s verse a whole new meaning. The ground was as though breeding for a virus to grow. The ground that was divided, that was steeped in violence, was almost waiting for something,” writes Ijlal.
The artist began taking photographs of the tree across her balcony. “As the numbers grew, new leaves emerged on the branches of the naked tree. On the road, the long march of people going back home began, some of whom permanently kept at a ‘social distance’ and all of them constant casualties,” writes Ijlal, hinting towards the casualties of violence and displacements. Her work comments upon the physical hollowing of the already hollowed up cities began. The people-less streets of the city, covered with dry leaves. Leaves that had only recently witnessed resistance and violence all in a matter of a couple of months.
Have you ever lay on your back and looked up at the clouds, imagining you saw a large dragon like shaped figure that slowly metamorphosed into a cat and then into wisps of cotton? Clouds shapes are perhaps the most evocative and playful imagery that we can trace back to even our childhood. Now, Chatterjee & Lal present a new body of drawings titled- Cloud Keepers by Mumbai-based artist, Sahej Rahal.
The works contemplate one of the most commonly evocative pictographs: clouds. “As our distances unravel across time, what lies within the air that separates us? Gusts of cinder gather among carriers of rain, shrouding our unformed futures,” contemplates the artist’s note. Rahal‘s cloud keepers, congregate within their ‘shadow-movements’, rendering uncertain potencies into shapeshifters that turn from fire-bearer, to foal, to jinn, to jester and jaguar, waiting in the thickness of what begins to rise.
Gallery Espace showcases a solo exposition by senior artist Amit Ambalal, titled ‘The Yogi & The Elephant.’ This suite of twelve recent watercolours were inspired by a current incident. The incident even gave rise to a controversial caricature by a renowned cartoonist. It was much canvased in the media, and it involved a saffron-clad figure who fell off an elephant while performing yoga on its back. Ambalal’s satirical imagination, the leitmotif of his over four-decade long painterly practice, was animated by the spectacle of absurdity that the incident presented. It gave rise to an amalgam of eccentric human and animal figures, and its dramatic immediacy and a body of work was thus born out of his Ahmedabad studio.
There is an implicit critique in the irreverent humour of these works of figures of authority and faith, in particular, of the television spectacle that yoga has become. However, Ambalal’s appraisal, much like the fluid, transparent lines of his watercolours, does not become heavy-handed. He retains his vibrant and playful contingency. “I was having fun with myself,” the artist says, “seeing how can I manage the geometry of the composition, how can I make the canvas come alive” Well, he certainly brought to life the works and the content in his inimitable style.
Watch this space as we talk about the other galleries and artists who will be taking part in the In Touch 6, the online exhibitions that keep the current art world at the viewers finger tips.
Text by Georgina Maddox
Image Courtesy: Participating Galleries and Artists
Find more about the Event, Galleries and Artists:
http://naturemorte.com/exhibitions/grammarofrandoms/
