group show in sweeden

(Published in art views and news)
Preksha Tater’s works are spontaneous scribbling dictated by the need to verbalize/visualize her subconscious. She is comfortable with drawings /colleges/ cutouts, which are done in small formats in size of visiting cards. These drawings are done randomly and have a playful spontaneity in them. Though her works doesn’t have an ambitious aspect, its arrangement together in random permutations and combinations done intuitively creates a visuality which attracts attention. She doesn’t emphasize on the thematic content but meanings meander through the images almost like doodles. This allows the chance for a narrative to build up. Interestingly, there is no emphasis on linear or progressive reading of her work rather its all chance that is emphasized. It is chance that builds up something; some kind of an atmospheric ambience and a psychological topography where the subconscious is let free in a particular moment. The images are absurd and at the same time recognizable and abstract. She doesn’t self consciously select her images and always emphasize on the process which leads to the recognizable forms in her works. Her works are more about formal and visual pleasure. This dependence on automatism and process reduces the physical involvement in the form of labor. The work process involves a gradual realization from simple recognizable forms or hues of colours which slowly builds up in accordance to her instinctive needs and formal pleasures.
Ketan Amin’s sculptures have a consistent recurrence of images. He feels there Is no need to render the whole body rather prefers a strange combination of hands with feet, legs or torso. This gives his work a surreal look. Though he uses classical bodies from Renaissance / Greek sculptures which are of an idealistic type they have a theatrical agility of baroque realism. He prefers talking about varied issues from global warming to contemporary politics by using the same images repeated over and over again almost to the point of exhaustion. This modernist claim for consistency of putting meanings from above leads to the artist’s intentional fallacy and meanings gets locked only in the artist’s dictionary. His skilful rendering of the body and technical expertise stands out strikingly separate in his works. One can also read how high art images are adopted in popular vocabularies. His sculptures can be seen as ‘vernacularisation’ of classical art forms. The peculiar aspect of this vernacularisation (for example the sign boards in India) is the unproblematic use of forms from any historic context and placing in a entirely different unrelated new situation. Can this been seen as a way to negotiate with the high and classical?
Mansoor Ali explores and works on a wide range of images and materials. His sculptures and installations are conceptually framed with a preplanned and premeditated intension. His primary emphasis has been on the question of identity. This emphasis on the subject’s identity formation and its conflict with varied social forces makes him question the system more from a self reflexive and experiential position. His major critique is also on the political and the bureaucratic class of the country. The craze for power and the hypocrisies of policy decision is a major theme of his work. Taking the obvious example of chair as a seat of power he tries to see the ironical meanings attached like comfort and so forth. There is no escape from the great game of power. Every time there are dialogues for bringing about peace, they are always broken and it traps humanity in vicious cycle of violence and uncertainty. The players change but the game remains the same. The minorities are always at the edge, within fragile walls of hope. Their identity is often at flux and is constantly monitored and threatened.
His works “I wanna stenciled God die”,”Black Friday”,” I wasn’t asked to be born”, “I don’t know the blood group”, “dance of democracy” are all about the fragility of ones existence at the margin of society. The symbols like child’s image the eggs, chair, cracks and even blood are important elements for his work in its exploration of a world of fragile borders of violence and faith. The fragmented self is symbolically shown with the fissured cracks. The decentered peripheral “other” is always made to sit dormant and voiceless by large majoritarian forces of the society which also finds a reflection in his works. His present work titled “Jugad” is a commentary on the ugly nature of history which washes its hands in blood. Everything starts and ends in blood shed of the weak and victims and the victory of the totalitarian rich forces. His chairs are generally made dysfunctional but have an aesthetic richness its authority and its presence is immense with surreal dream of coming up in equilibrium by standing (posturing) on the edge which is the condition of any minority in any country. This work talks universally about not only particular country’s communal atmosphere but for the whole world.

Deciphering desires: works of KK Muhamed.

K.Muhamed passed out from shantineketan from the department of Printmaking in 1996. He later continued doing print making for two years in kanoria art center, Ahemedabad. Later he shifted to Baroda and started painting from the year 2001-2. At present he is working on his videos and sculptures which would be part of the solo show he is planning.

“Protest works in different ways. One is direct. You can shout, it works in different level. The other is silently you can do some thing, like the examples of good poetry and texts becoming some very significant protest. So other than going out and shouting, I am thinking about a certain image which speaks more than that. In itself it should have a power to generate an argument. For me that is very important, to generate something as a part of discourse”- K.K.Muhamed during his interview.
Muhamed’s images are about desire. But they are not about his individual desires but are about the very structure in the society which creates conditions for the production of desire itself. Excavating through the historical and mythological archives of knowledge, the images unearth the genealogy of the violence as we experience today.
His work utilizes the stratergy of reversals in myriad ways. They are reversals of the classical vision as well as reversals in the meanings. The painting induces viewer towards a ‘classicism’, but everytime the viewer is pushed back again to the surface or the foreground. This is achieved by either darkening the spaces leading to the depth or by placing images in a manner in the foreground therby pulling back the viwer towards the surface.He uses multiple pictorial spaces and perspectives. He also uses photographic images for flattening the depth and makes everything appear on the surface. He also uses varied tactile decoration inscribed over the body of different objjects and structures. He delibrately keep his viewers away from the trip to transcendence as in renaissance paintings, but each time things bounce back on the ground. This questions the ‘grand’promises of achieving salvation , truth, heaven and thus attacks the very core of spiritualism.
This assist him in deconstructing the very notion of “classicism” and makes his work a site of historical memories and everyday mundane reality. The stratergy of reversals is also apparent in how he deconstructs the images with fixed traditional meanings connected to them. Often images repeat in his paintings. But everytime they are put in different contexts. This enables in dislocating the fixed meaning generation. In the “speaking tree” series and “desire” series he upturns the notion of spiritualism. He shows the calm peaceful tree of knowledge as volatile and aggressive organic matter. It is the haven for dangerous objects of mass destruction and violence. This could also be intrepreted as an allegory of machoism and of the phalliocentric social orders and structures operating at multiple levels. He sees violent aggressive masculinity in the historical and cultural context.
The machostic male body wrapped in a traditional dhoti and wearing boots though immediately refers to the populist style statement of bollywood, dwells further as a representation of our desires. The screen like treatment which can be also read as viewers reflection of of the desire for a perfect body.

The myth of narcisscuss becomes for him the leitmotif and as a major aspect of self centicism in different discourses. In most of his work huge red flower with its overpowering narcisitic expression makes its presence as a major allegory. This flower is seen sometimes sprouting from an unproductive soil or interior or sometimes from a house. Almost all his works underlines the theme of narcissism and self centricism and the connected violence as a consequence. The violence is questioned as nothing but the expression of one’s own guilt.
His paintings are filled with organic- machinistic objects arranged like an archive. The fragmentary bodies –machinations are shown metamorphosing and are always in becoming. They are placed over the landscapes or different architectural spaces. Architecture in his work stands as an immutable grandeur of the state and its power. These structures majorly spatializes the objects by allowing them to interact within themselves and the whole.their meaning is derived more from their spatialization.
In his book series there are about 20 books which are supposed to be displayed on the floor on a traditional stand which is used to keep religious and holy books like Bible, Quran and Gita etc. these books have similar elements as his paintings and more prominent are the objects of violence. Thus he questions the very foundation of religion and the connected human tragedies. He uses Deluzian notion of bodies without organs and desiring machines and his propogation of anti oedipalisation.
His videos can be seen as a continuation of his paintings. Herre the camera moves constantly from one object to another. The objects are viewed microscopically, their textures,pores and the deep shadows. By means of visual mixing he creates a palimpsest of a culture that speaks about violence and failures.Texts like sacred violence, perfect faith, mimetic desire, madness, genesis of violence, the genealogy of violence etc occurs along with the images of fire landscape, clouds and architectural façade and interiors. Often the camera movement starts from an architectural edifice and keep moving as if hovering over a mirage with never ending pathway.often it ceases in darkness or dark shadows at the floors of the architectural structures. Sometimes walls stands as a hurdle and obstruct an access further.
Rollie Mukherjee,
Artist, Art-critic,
Vadodara.
This was published under the section in between- from vadodara in the booklet, 'art views and news' a monthly published by aakruti gallery,kolkota, july 2010, issue

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