Art & The City: A Venue of Representational
Dilemma

H.A. Anil Kumar

While offering the hard copy of the invitation to his first solo show at Alliance Francoise (Bengaluru) recently (September 2015), Saleem Shoyab, a recent post-graduate from the College of Fine Arts (Chitrakala Parishath), had an explanation and an apology. Second thing: The cover for the invitation card was at least twice as big as the former, a mismatch. The invite itself carried an image of one of his work that was achromatic and looked like the photograph of a folded newspaper. Saleem relished narrating the fact that most of those who saw the oversized cover to his invitation found solace in the charm (ing) in the image on his invitation-card, which took the form of a certain narrative to his chosen act of personal invites. The folded-newspaper image, his work, appeared like a photo in black and white, which perhaps should have impressed the recipient’s minds. Altogether, the personal invite in the age of digital invites made the visit to his show rather irresistible. The oversized cover to the invite, to those who know the general difficulties that younger artists find in holding a solo show, served as an ‘analogy’ of stepping into oversized shoes.