Colonial time enchantment
The latest exhibition at Tasveer (November 10 to 25) was quite different from the previous ones which, even when beautiful and individualistic, captured the essence of real places and the human condition. The "Pilgrimage" photographers of Tim Hall look at the beauty of India through a vision shaped during the colonial days, which he sublimates intimately and most aesthetically while, nonetheless, reinforcing that prism. Whether he does it deliberately or unconsciously, such a filter may be perhaps natural to a British artist. From the local perspective, however, the impact combines enchantment with a note of irritation.
One certainly admires the calm, lyrical subtlety of the sceneries and their painterly qualities of colour, tone and texture interpreted through inherently photographic properties that enable, for instance, subdued translucency over almost minimalist stretches of hazy air and water as well as retain a tinge of the lively actual in the small, somewhat sharper figures of people.
Although Hall speaks about his inspiration from Rothko and Turner, the shots of river-side Varanasi referred here appear to recreate 19th century paintings, photographs too, of the exotic picturesque, like the Daniell brothers', including their composition, mistiness and hues with an element of sepia. His vistas come from an empathic outsider, hence, in similar prints people become part of the landscape atmosphere which for the artist epitomises spirituality.
The series about pilgrims performing ablutions and praying in the Ganga with nuanced restraint grasp the rhythms that link moving human silhouettes and water ripples to evoke a mood of quiet worshipfulness in separate acts that bind the participants. On the other hand, to see this as entirely spiritual is a western stereotype which paints the exotic poor as rich of the soul, a stereotype which has been comfortably appropriated in the country, whereas reality would reveal mostly the kind of ritualism where religion cannot be separated from practical life and social compulsions. Hall avoids its drastic or cruel aspects even while focussing on figures and crowds in city environs.
Rather, with much sensitivity he brings out the warmth of a personal gesture and the spontaneous, animated togetherness of groups engaged in their activities. The brighter then images can wonderfully convey the earthy grace of mundane yet serene scenes. Soon though, he returns to refining the familiar, like in the shot of village women with a baby and a basket carried by one of them on her head.
In his portraits shot against a plain white background Hall claims to be following Richard Avedon's method, but what actually strikes the viewer is the resemblance, maybe allusion, to old ethnographic native studies. The clear, pronounced images in black and white display bearded ascetics and muscular wrestlers as they present themselves with some awkwardness and some simple, touching directness. The same traits in an interesting and expressive manner connect the colonial reference with unassuming contemporariness.
Six women artists
The display "Artists without Boundaries" was organised by Renaissance for the Cancer Patients Aid Association and presented at Ista on November 18 to continue till the 26th at the gallery. It is a loose assembly of work by six women artists whose styles sometimes have and sometimes don't have feminine characteristics. Among the former is Gogi Saroj Pal with her intentionally subversive but sweetly stylised nayika and her just pleasantly expressive half-realistic equivalent of the present. Lallitha Jawaharilal too has female figures in landscape which are better when freer and slightly expressionistic, but turn mannered with mythological references.
Asma Menon's new hybrid menagerie gracefully alludes to vibrant ornate qualities of folklore but stays largely on the surface. Rekha Rao's abstracted impressions from the immediate have sincerity and energy but not much more, while Meher Afroz indulges in a formalistic play with abstract meshes, linear strokes, translucency and texture. The graphics by Mobina Zuberi are cultured but over-familiar in their blend of essentialist figures or heads, symbolic forms and abstract planar divisions.
Fabric and pigment
Malaa Sethhi studied and researched textile design in Delhi and London. "Art at Silk", her recent display at Gallery_g (November 18 to 23) strove to connect her experience of fabric with painting and raise it to the plane of art. Without aiming at artificial profundities, Sethhi honestly addresses the purely decorative delights of her endeavour. She does that also with consummate skills, even a degree of fluency. On the same canvas she pastes crumpled cloth and paints it to evoke common yet differing forms, hues, textures and tonalities that echo in the conventionally pigmented parts of the compositions. She also contemplates the interaction of soft colours with transparent backgrounds. The effort remains self-limited and somewhat easy.
Child-focus
C D Jain from Kerala works with deprived children as well as paints about their sorrows, hardships, fantasies and joys. However much one can appreciate his dedicated empathy, it would be difficult to say that it translates fully into artistic evocativeness. His exhibition at the CKP (November 9 to 15) seemed like a gamut of shifting aesthetic choices, each having been handled rather simplistically.
His design-based compositions either echo of K.G. Subramnaian or fall into clearly delineated but vague geometrisations, as the figures of children alternate stylised cuteness and light essentialism. Jain becomes more expressive when loosening up and letting colour bond with outline.
Elsewhere he conjures colourful kaleidoscopes of child-like adult images which are pleasant and somewhat freer but not more than that.
