INTERFACE

PREETI JOSEPH

What happens when eight artists native to the same land, with eight viewpoints and ideologies and numerous interpretations come together to express it artistically? A show titled ‘Interface’ is born which acts as a polemic of bygone times and a reckoner of the times to come. The meaning of artwork proliferates on transfer from the private sphere of an artist’s studio into the public domain of the white cube. It bodes well when the artist flies solo but what happens when work collides with work? When highly individualized ideologies rendered by artists of different temperaments are brought together into this singular space? The result can indeed be quite confounding with apparent disparities that disturb. Yet, ‘Interface’ a group exhibition showcasing eight artists – A.P Sunil, Manoj Vyloor, Antony Karal, Shijo Jacob, Manu Binny George, Suresh Panicker, Remya Sandeep and Babitha Kadannappally at Buddha Gallery at Fort Kochi co-ordinated by Shijo Jacob enters into pleasant dialogues with each other. At first these artists’ works seem intensely diversified in themes. But despite their disparity, this admixture of artists bred on common ground homogenizes and converges at a juncture, at an interface of contemporariness from whence interactions ensue. In accord with the present their works deconstruct and reconstruct master narratives of all times and its notion of constructed ‘reality’. These times marked by ambiguities, between progress and the price of progress, between abundance and lack, between rising urbanization and ecological exploitation are further themes delved into. Sunil’s works demystify the meta-narrative of ancient myths wherein classical stories of high culture are parodied as mass cultural elements of low art. Squirrels scamper across the watercolour surface as crows break forth into raspy verses and palpable hands arise out of the sleeves of the shirt hung on a clothesline by a hanger to bare itself open to reveal a ‘couple’ of no great significance, at once bringing forth familiar recollections of Hanuman’s devotional feat of opening his chest to reveal Rama and Sita. Manoj’s ‘Shrine’ a triptych, uses layered narratives and hybridization of media and images, of graphite renditions of ancient Mithuna sculptures set against the acrylic backdrop of dynamic molecular structures, a combination of the seen world pitched against the unseen giving rise to new readings of ancient myths. This dichotomy is emphasized further in the central image which serves simultaneously as a female principle and Siva’s eye revealing the binary oppositions of creation and destruction existing in the same sphere. Antony’s works on nature are a sort of archetype, depicting a generalized/ universal rather than a specific/ local landscape that are constructs that have emerged from a ‘collective unconscious’. Using the language of Pop art, Manu, produces ‘high’ art from ‘low’ popular art of a consumerist culture; advertisement. In ‘Purity guaranteed’ he ironically reproduces the language of advertising which employs sleek images reinforced by texts that emphatically attest the ‘truth’ of the constructed illusions in an attempt to promote consumption . Shijo’s works from the series ‘Displaced’ exist within a politicized aesthetics. The diagrammatic map on the canvas becomes a metaphor of colonization, the riotous nature of the powerful accentuated through carefully selected imagery pitched against infernal red, silencing the voices of the dispossessed, who are now refugees in their home terrain. The myth of ‘development’ is further dismantled in Suresh’s dry pastel works. Sights of the present he fears will be a thing of the distant past, part of a forgotten memory, and will need to be preserved within museums for posterity.