‘Variable Operatives’ at The Guild India

The Guild Art Gallery presents a new joint show, entitled ‘Variable Operatives’, featuring Baiju Parthan and Prayas Abhinav.

An introduction to the former’s section, Vector, asks: “Is virtuality an escalation of the real, augmented and exponentially raised to the nth power? Or is it the antinomic twin gradually and stealthily devouring its sibling…?”

Quoting French theorist Paul Virilio (“The invention of the ship is also the invention of the shipwreck.”) it refers to the artworks as located at the interstice of the ethereal virtual and the objective real. The suggested motif - Reality is essentially an epiphenomenon by virtue of it being an interpretation of sensory data filtered through cultural and gender bias and virtuality the inevitable effervescence a probable dystopian adjunct modifying the real, it adds.

These art objects are collision points aimed at presenting the erosion of the implicit 'faith in perception' which is the foundation on which solidity and predictability that we associate with the objective real are built upon, Baiju Parthan explains. An inter-media artist, he works simultaneously with the traditional media of painting as well as digital technology based installation art.

Born in Kerala in 1956, he has a rich academic background that has played a significant role in his art practice. Along with degrees in Painting, Botany, Philosophy, and a Post-grad diploma in Comparative mythology, he has done studies in computer game level design at the Pratt Institute Manhattan USA. He has done his BSC in Botany, studied painting from 1978-83 at the art school in Goa and he has a Master’s degree in Comparative Mythology at the Mumbai University.

Baiju Parthan is one of the early exponents of new media art and mediatic-realism in the Indian contemporary art scene. Essentially, his work is about world views or cosmographies that are on collision course affecting and transforming each other, and the resulting ontological fallout felt and lived by us all.