BackIn search of the bigger picture
A show of works by four artists, displayed in four separate rooms
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New Delhi-based artist Masooma Syed finds that some situations in life just don’t make sense. It’s at times like these that she is inclined to inscribe something like “piss off" on an artwork. Piss Off is one of eight pieces Syed will be showing at a group exhibition titled In Other Rooms, at GallerySKE in Bengaluru.
Starting this weekend, In Other Rooms will show works by four artists—Syed, Martand Khosla, Suchender P. and Avinash Veeraraghavan. Each artist will display their works in a separate room. Vasundhara Sellamuthu, assistant director at the gallery, says it is up to visitors to interpret the larger narrative connecting the four works.
In terms of medium and theme, the works seem to defy attempts at a cohesive narrative.
There’s an element of fun in the works of Syed and Suchender. Suchender’s Taxidermy series of 20 works plays with the idea of proportions to convey the serious message of wildlife conservation: Each watercolour on 30gsm paper shows the flag of a country, a vulnerable species, and a man dressed in animal hide.
In one painting, an Indian man dressed in a leopard-print sherwani dwarfs a cheetah that has been reduced to toy-size; a tiny Indian flag is pinned to a tall stool. “These 20 countries are powerful. They are destroying the environment (and wildlife habitats)," says Suchender in a phone interview.
Syed’s works have a tongue-in-cheek, satirical flavour. All the works in this show, made from 2012-15, are “momentary responses to situations in her life and her surroundings", says the artist. Like the incident that triggered Piss Off, made with papier-mâché, M-Seal, enamel and cardboard, was so ridiculous it just didn’t merit any other response. She didn’t want to talk about it, but that’s how she came up with the idea of inscribing those words on the side of a red cardboard box mounted with black microphones to amplify the message.
Khosla’s works use brick dust to talk about subjects like urbanization and migration. Perhaps one tenuous connection between Syed’s and Khosla’s works is that they all point to a kind of momentariness. The brick dust in Khosla’s works is easy to sweep away. And Syed tries to
capture the fleeting idea, feeling or state of mind.
The fourth artist in the show, Veeraraghavan, has worked with materials like inkjet print. His works seem dystopic, like scrambled digital images. There is a refrain here from Syed’s work, of trying to make sense of the world around us.
Whether or not you can find that compelling narrative that connects these four, it is an engaging question. You might just find yourself going back and forth between rooms to test hypotheses.
In Other Rooms will be on display from 9 May-26 June, 11am-7pm (Sundays by appointment; Tuesdays closed), at GallerySKE, 2, Berlie Street. Click here for details.
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