Immobility stimulates meaning
An exhibition, "37 Indian Still Lifes", comprising works of mostly the country's photographers and a number of foreigners shooting here, Tasveer's latest exhibition (Cinnamon, August 24 to September 14), came as an interesting and insightful exception from the prevailing series from the oeuvres of individual photographers.
Although this is not stated in the catalogue, the artists' comments accompanying their works suggest that they have been asked to respond to the broadly understood theme of still life. The participants being photographers of high quality as well as visual artists using the camera among other means, let one intuit yet again the common presence of enhanced or analysed sensation and the meaning of reality as an essential element of creating art.
The titular subject was rarely referred to in its classical forms from the memento mori to the conventional academic type, instead revealing finely and in a diversity of ways certain properties of image restriction and its stilling that are capable of and necessary to stimulate a heightened sensation, mood and perception or interpretation of things beyond the descriptiveness of the immediately apparent and which are often, if not always, required in creative expression. The works as such make one realise how photography anchors its interpretative in the experience of the world thanks to its close link to its direct surface. One quite agrees with Anjum Katyal's introduction, which stresses that all photographs are still life in some manner while negotiating death and revival on another plane.
However, one tends to associate the importance of conscious composing by the artist not with him or her actually arranging motifs to be shot but, rather, recognising the self-evocative parts of the visible, choosing only the most vital from those, and approaching those with aesthetic adequacy and sporadically, with a slight but significant gesture, whether that happens intuitively or is conceptually oriented.
It is from the latter position that Vivek Vilasini issues a contemporary memento mori warning in his origami skull of banknotes.
Apart from the natural similarities to the genre in the senior Jyoti Bhatt's rustic wall detail and perhaps in the barbed wire surrounded temple pinnacle by Manoj Kumar Jain, some artists allude to it knowingly yet indirectly, be it the stuffed tiger head in a glass case in a present day hotel by Anna Fox or Arun Nangla's electrifying red roses by a socket, Bloodsow V S's miniature Barbie doll as the key to feminine angst, Christopher Taylor's messy bananas brimming with vitality, Karen Knorr's sensuous and posed, nonetheless more expressive coexistence of animals with human handled objects, the wall with a crack and a firm ring which for Madhavi Swarup captures the dual force of existence, the steel glass against a pink curtain which for Sunil Gupta represents HIV children and Mahesh Shantaram's piling of kitschy draperies and vases in a wedding set that speaks for the current middle-class ethos.
Several images may not be aware of the still life connect while bringing out its essential properties and impact from the direct, like in Amit Pasricha and his mass of vivacious, colour-stained shoes left by Holi revellers, in Annu Palakunnathu Matthew and her raw but nostalgic heap of cane baskets, its poetic equivalent in Neeta Madahar, in Jasmeen Patheja's interaction with a clock shop window display, in the old-fashioned, warm solidity of well deserved payment in Tom Parker. Some photographers oscillate between the feel of detail proximity and vast scenery (Vinay Mahidhar, Vicky Roy, Tim Hall, Tarun Chopra, Swapan Nayak, Saibal Das, Rajib De, Rajesh Vora, Prashant Panjiar, Prarthana Modi, Francois Daireaux), some others subtly and strongly conjure virtual landscapes from interiors to perceptively evoke hidden but real conditions behind (Adil Hasan, Anuj Ambalal, Bijoy Chowdhury, Deepak John Mathew, Edgar Angelone, Gireesh G V), even surreal atmospheres (Amit Mehra) or simultaneously intrinsic and somewhat wonderfully staged moods (Navroze Contractor, Mukesh Parpiani, Pradip Malde).
Colourful reverberations
Imagination is more important than knowledge…", the installation by Tiffany Singh of New Zealand (September 8 to 14), was the result of her residency at 1 Shanthi Road and her interaction with children and teachers of Jagruthi School. Although attractive in its brightness and the graceful intensity of the collected material, it had a fair dose of the literal and the insufficiently processed. Meant to suggest and stimulate mutually influential story-telling and dreams of journeying, the work had flights of many coloured threads fanning out sideways from a wall corner reflected in such progressions of ritual powders, all interspersed with multitudes of child-painted paper boats and ethnic motifs from garlanded jars to clay lamps.
An exhibition, "37 Indian Still Lifes", comprising works of mostly the country's photographers and a number of foreigners shooting here, Tasveer's latest exhibition (Cinnamon, August 24 to September 14), came as an interesting and insightful exception from the prevailing series from the oeuvres of individual photographers.
Although this is not stated in the catalogue, the artists' comments accompanying their works suggest that they have been asked to respond to the broadly understood theme of still life. The participants being photographers of high quality as well as visual artists using the camera among other means, let one intuit yet again the common presence of enhanced or analysed sensation and the meaning of reality as an essential element of creating art.
The titular subject was rarely referred to in its classical forms from the memento mori to the conventional academic type, instead revealing finely and in a diversity of ways certain properties of image restriction and its stilling that are capable of and necessary to stimulate a heightened sensation, mood and perception or interpretation of things beyond the descriptiveness of the immediately apparent and which are often, if not always, required in creative expression. The works as such make one realise how photography anchors its interpretative in the experience of the world thanks to its close link to its direct surface. One quite agrees with Anjum Katyal's introduction, which stresses that all photographs are still life in some manner while negotiating death and revival on another plane.
However, one tends to associate the importance of conscious composing by the artist not with him or her actually arranging motifs to be shot but, rather, recognising the self-evocative parts of the visible, choosing only the most vital from those, and approaching those with aesthetic adequacy and sporadically, with a slight but significant gesture, whether that happens intuitively or is conceptually oriented.
It is from the latter position that Vivek Vilasini issues a contemporary memento mori warning in his origami skull of banknotes.
Apart from the natural similarities to the genre in the senior Jyoti Bhatt's rustic wall detail and perhaps in the barbed wire surrounded temple pinnacle by Manoj Kumar Jain, some artists allude to it knowingly yet indirectly, be it the stuffed tiger head in a glass case in a present day hotel by Anna Fox or Arun Nangla's electrifying red roses by a socket, Bloodsow V S's miniature Barbie doll as the key to feminine angst, Christopher Taylor's messy bananas brimming with vitality, Karen Knorr's sensuous and posed, nonetheless more expressive coexistence of animals with human handled objects, the wall with a crack and a firm ring which for Madhavi Swarup captures the dual force of existence, the steel glass against a pink curtain which for Sunil Gupta represents HIV children and Mahesh Shantaram's piling of kitschy draperies and vases in a wedding set that speaks for the current middle-class ethos.
Several images may not be aware of the still life connect while bringing out its essential properties and impact from the direct, like in Amit Pasricha and his mass of vivacious, colour-stained shoes left by Holi revellers, in Annu Palakunnathu Matthew and her raw but nostalgic heap of cane baskets, its poetic equivalent in Neeta Madahar, in Jasmeen Patheja's interaction with a clock shop window display, in the old-fashioned, warm solidity of well deserved payment in Tom Parker. Some photographers oscillate between the feel of detail proximity and vast scenery (Vinay Mahidhar, Vicky Roy, Tim Hall, Tarun Chopra, Swapan Nayak, Saibal Das, Rajib De, Rajesh Vora, Prashant Panjiar, Prarthana Modi, Francois Daireaux), some others subtly and strongly conjure virtual landscapes from interiors to perceptively evoke hidden but real conditions behind (Adil Hasan, Anuj Ambalal, Bijoy Chowdhury, Deepak John Mathew, Edgar Angelone, Gireesh G V), even surreal atmospheres (Amit Mehra) or simultaneously intrinsic and somewhat wonderfully staged moods (Navroze Contractor, Mukesh Parpiani, Pradip Malde).
Colourful reverberations
Imagination is more important than knowledge…", the installation by Tiffany Singh of New Zealand (September 8 to 14), was the result of her residency at 1 Shanthi Road and her interaction with children and teachers of Jagruthi School. Although attractive in its brightness and the graceful intensity of the collected material, it had a fair dose of the literal and the insufficiently processed. Meant to suggest and stimulate mutually influential story-telling and dreams of journeying, the work had flights of many coloured threads fanning out sideways from a wall corner reflected in such progressions of ritual powders, all interspersed with multitudes of child-painted paper boats and ethnic motifs from garlanded jars to clay lamps.