Atul Dodiya’s new collection of calibrated shutters

Atul Dodiya’s new collection of calibrated shutters display images of Bhupen Kakkar, Tyeb Mehta, Picasso, Mahatma and all those individuals he greatly admires.

The acclaimed contemporary Indian artist employs the shutters as the apt backdrop of his art, which combines pointed snapshots of the city’s fast-changing urban landscape. The shutter art references icons such as Mahatma Gandhi and Hindu gods among other motifs leading to complex surreal compositions.

His earlier shutters, he experimented with almost a decade ago, were operational one. It was a kind of ‘conceptual solid art’, which could move up and down. It had a definite feel. The artist had made use of enamel paint on the then metal roller coasters. In fact, Atil Dodiya’s first generation shutters, so to say, operated in a conceptual space existing between sculpture, painting and theatre.

The new shutters’ series ‘Malevich Matters’ on display at New Delhi based Vadehra Art Gallery, seems to have broken away. The artist says, "I’ve used oil for my new shutters painted on canvas. Their life-like corrugated metallic surface makes up the backdrop. They seem like applique work on the surface. I let this hybrid imagery happen so that it engages the viewer and raises in their mind questions."

Atul Dodiya started painting shutters when London’s Tate Modern museum commissioned him in 2000 to make urban landscapes of Mumbai for its famous ’Century City’ show. He informs that Mumbai was then selected as one of the world cities to portray the socio-political changes over the last decade. Mumbai then had witnessed riots, conflicts, curfew and the underworld wars. Whenever Mumbai was under siege it literally downed its shutters and its streets emptied out.

Summing up the series, an article in The Mint notes that ‘Malevich Matters’ is like a self-assessment of the artist’s own oeuvre or a culmination of all his artistic interests.