‘Bako exists. Imagine’ by Atul Dodiya

A new series of works by Atul Dodiya, entitled ‘Bako exists. Imagine’ takes place at Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai.

An accompanying note states that ‘Bako exists. Imagine’ is a text-based work which consists of twelve paintings and an installation with nine wooden cabinets. It adds: “These poetic episodes are based on a fiction, written in Gujarati by a major contemporary Gujarati poet Labhshanker Thaker.

"Bako is a young boy who meets Bapu - Mahatma Gandhi, in his sleep. In fact, they both meet each other in their sleep and talk. A kind of fantasy, which allows and evokes childhood memories... There is no fence of age between this old man and the young boy. They joke, they laugh, they talk abstract."

In these twelve blackboard paintings, along with the cabinet installation, autobiographical references gradually mingle into a larger creative journey. The intention is – the viewer no more remains an outsider but subconsciously, becomes an invisible character involved along with Baka and Bapu in this hilarious fantasy.

He began his career painting autobiographically and primarily in a photo-realist mode, holding his first solo exhibition of oil paintings in 1989 at Gallery Chemould. Tracking his career, one may state that a year studying at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1991-2 nuanced Dodiya's engagement with international modernist and postmodernist art.

While he was growing uninterested in the potential of literalist realism by this time, exposure to contemporary art that manipulated realist styles attracted Dodiya; he identified especially with Sigmar Polke's experimental multimedia subversions and David Salle's figurative pastiche.

Atul Dodiya has drawn on Indian national politics throughout his career. In particular, he has continually remembered Gandhi and inscribed the leader's politics into his work. This culminated in a seminal exhibition of watercolors at Gallery Chemould in 1999, "Atul Dodiya: An Artist of Non-Violence," with its title referring to a quotation by Gandhi himself.

(Information courtesy: Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai)