Gripping ‘grids' that deconstruct existing realities

A new visually arresting body of work by an emerging Indian artist on view at New Delhi based Gallery Artspeaks incorporates deft usage of ‘grids' to deconstruct existing realities.

Shruti Gupta in her new series of works, entitled ‘Counter Gaze’, builds a lot of grids on her pictorial space so that a viewer can negotiate her reality in both an aesthetic and philosophical way. For instance, in ‘Towards And Away’ and ‘The Folds Opened Out’, these grids, almost having the serenity of a gauche on paper or linen, could be interpreted as the abstract representations of the urban-scapes.

Curator Johny M.L mentions: “Grids create a filter and ground of moderation through which the realities could be negotiated, captured and re-constructed in novel fashions. Artists of the post-modern times have effectively used the possibilities of grids, both virtual and real ones, in their works.

The apparent haziness or the presence of a transparent veil like coat over these works in fact provides a general ‘grid space’ to them even when the artist does not consciously create grids of negotiation in geometrical shapes. One can see the artist’s involvement with the beauty of the human body in most of these works too, although considerably moderated and muted.

While she has chosen to now create visual planes of abstract color schemes, she incorporates solidly drawn male human figures but distorted to some extent to emphasize the feeling of dislocation of these human beings. Shruti Gupta’s human figures are depicted as thoughtful beings (‘Alter Ego’, ‘As The World Spun’), representing the dizziness of those caught in the dynamics of urbanization.

In ‘Yesterday Unravels, Today Engulfs’, the artist creates this movement in the form of a trapeze net or huge mosquito net tied within a historical architecture that represents the old and sustainable urbanization projects. In this net, human beings are seen as if they were washed away by a gushing stream; a metaphor for the dynamics of history.

On the other hand, In ‘I See, I Wait, I Believe, she uses the human figure as an isolated being within a complex landscape of grids, to depict the fact that one is alone in a very special way in urban life.