Playing with the gallery space for greater visual impact

A few bold steps in the recent years have stretched the boundaries of conventional art display. Curator Gitanjali Dang, for example tries to frill it up. At a show conceptualized by her at Mumbai based Loft gallery in 2009, she tried out a new experiment. An apparent take-off or statement on the Internet obsession with cat images, the curator swamped the exhibit site with wool balls and peculiar paw marks.

Her show entitled, ‘Anxious’, at Mumbai’s Mirchandani & Steinruecke in 2008 had opted to spell out ‘outrageous’ in an altogether different way. Taking a cue from Peter Handke’s play ‘Offending the Audience’, she had paintings put up on the ceiling, upside down and curiously atop a ladder. No titles or date markers were there.

Gallerist Ranjana Steinruecke let her indulge in this experimentation, believing that curators and art practitioners should be given a free hand to create. A recent group show at Project 88, ‘Form & Phenomenon’ was about intense experience within the space and also time continuum. Rana Begum, an artist based in London, creates sleekly lacquered aluminum sculptures that use geometry, form, repetition and color. The core concept is to deliberate over the ways in which viewers engage with objects and the way they view them.

One of India’s most promising artists, Hemali Bhuta, also responds to space through her work. Her awareness stems from the fact that she has studied interior design. For her debut solo, she used the space of Project 88 gallery as inspiration. Her husband and artist Shreyas Karle again tried out a similar experiment at the gallery.

Keeping with the trend, contemporary Indian artists are indeed getting increasingly conscious of playing with available space for greater visual impact. The idea is to transform it into a seamless part of their creation - indoor or outdoor. A case in point is Jitish Kallat’s work ‘Public Notice 3’. It lit up the Grand Staircase at the Art Institute of Chicago - an idea that was critically appreciated.