‘Lens-ing It’: Abul Kalam Azad and Vivek Vilasini's photo series

Apart from Ram Rahman and Sunil Gupta, ‘Lens-ing It’ at Ashna Gallery, New Delhi features works by Abul Kalam Azad and Vivek Vilasini. The former creates ‘series’ of ‘types’ of people who in the popular imagination represent Goa. He de-constructs the ‘stereotypes’ created by the popular movies and other popular narratives about Goans and in its place, establishes a series of ‘archetypes’ of people who in reality constitute the ‘racial character’ of a society. For the artist, racial character is not a term of insult on the contrary he, going by the Jungian ideas frames them as characters that determine the cultural make up of a society.

Abul Kalam Azad, whom curator Johny ML calls the ‘master of the Mattanchery School of contemporary photography’ revels in documenting the immediate surroundings with a deeply rooted ideological positioning on politics and gender, and also he uses his creative forces to capture things that could subtly evoke autobiographical linkages between the artist and the images. In the present series, he presents a set of photographs generally titled ‘My Anger and Other Stories’.

Abul Azad employs direct photography as his method. The angle from which the objects are captured shows how the artist holds these objects together in his life however scattered they are as if they were the sustaining narratives of his public and private life as an artist as well as an individual.

Vivek Vilasini’s ‘Between One Shore and Several Others’ is one of the highly acclaimed series produced by the artist during the last ten years of his career. In this series, he painstakingly documents the people who have names that do not have anything to do with their location, personality or profession. Some of them are named Stalin, some are Ho Chi Minh and Soviet Breeze.

The artist recaptures the socio-political and cultural contexts in which these people came to have these names. The living people with ‘un-localized’ names achieve semi-iconic status in these works, ironically emphasizing the contradictions that they embody not only within their contexts but also in an exposed global scenario. While giving them a sort of iconicity, with the iconic names as their claim to fame, Vivek also traces the cultural roots that could have imbibed the energies for their parents who named them after these well known personalities.

(Information and essay courtesy: curator Johny ML for Ashna Gallery, New Delhi)

Analyzing photographic works in a series curated by Johny ML

Manisha Gera Baswani’s series at Ashna Gallery, New Delhi as part of ‘Lens-ing It’ curated by Johny ML is all about her journey through the lives of the artists and art activists within the context of their work places. In these photographs, Manisha carefully collapses the idea of a secured private into the realm of a discursive public by capturing the most unguarded moments from their lives.

The artist makes a silent intrusion in order to chronicle the lives and times of the cultural makers but at the same time by choosing her silent locations the artist speaks of her idea of looking at artists making and presenting art both within the public and private spheres. She has been working this project for the last twelve years, initially focusing on a couple of artists whom she considers her ‘Masters’ and later looking at more artists who would allow her to click them while they worked.

One of the most interesting aspects of this series is that the subject-object polarization is considerably erased through the nullification of a strong subjective gaze on the body of the ‘objects’. Here the protagonists in each picture appear as if they were just an integral part of the whole setting and cannot be wrested apart for highlighting their presence.

On the other hand, Deepak John Mathew has two series of works in ‘Lens-ing It’ show. Done over a period of time, the first series has images from his home interiors and the second one has images from an anthropological and historical museum. Seen simultaneously, they resonate with the same ideology, tendency and meaning.

They preserve memories in certain ways but through various associations they also preserve the relationship between the extremes of love and violence. The domestic atmosphere devoid of its members but with the symbols and objects that they have left behind reminds one of the museum displays now detached from their original contexts. At the same time the museum displays with the mental associations that a viewer could make in their presence remind one of a domestic atmosphere where history is played out in its various microcosmic forms.

Anup Mathew Thomas looks at the ways in which colonialism has taken various manifestations in our contemporary personal and social lives. There are memories and myths that help the human beings to form an ‘idea’ about their own lives. These memories could be those of colonialism working in personal lives both as history and an ideological notion.

(Information and essay courtesy: curator Johny ML for Ashna Gallery, New Delhi)

A look at photographic works by Ram Rahman and Sunil Gupta

Introducing the viewers to the participating artists in his photography show, entitled ‘Lens-ing It’, curator Johny MLstates: “I do not intend to push these artists into the realm of something called ‘pure photography’ because the word ‘pure’ or ‘purity’ could cause a different ideological reading.

Hence, when I call these artists ‘lens based artists’ what I intend to say is this that they are artists who do not use their photography for creating another form of art. For these artists, photography and the photographic prints in themselves are complete forms (though opened ended often) which are liable to be analyzed contextually, using any tool or methodology, further as the images survive the time.”

Among the artists featured at Ashna Gallery in New Delhi is one of the most active photography artists in India. Ram Rahman has invested his energies in not only documenting and portraying the ideological and gender politics of his choice but also has employed his vision and camera for capturing the rare moments of intellectual rebellion in and around Delhi, where he resides half of the year, and elsewhere.

The series that the curator has chosen together with the artist for this show is not done in one go. Taken over a period of two decades, in this ‘imagined’ series (by the curator) one could see people, identifiable by their contributions and stance in public life. There are politicians like our present prime minister, artists and activists and so on in these pictures.

Reading within and without the context of the photograph and the frozen time exemplified in the pictures, despite their disparities in theme, one could see the aesthetics and politics of the artist conjoining them in one string as if these portrayals of the intelligentsia of Delhi were in fact exposing the chapters of an unpublished novel still waiting to be written down by the author.

Sunil Gupta, the veteran amongst the international contemporary photography artists is famous for his pictures of gender politics. As an individual who has declared his gender preferences long back, Sunil Gupta has been working towards establishing the aesthetics of difference through his photography that predominantly feature the man to man relationships both in the urban and rural scenarios. Also he makes meanderings to his ancestral spaces and attempts to find the linkages between his present self and the selves that had formed him ages back.

(Information and essay courtesy: curator Johny ML for Ashna Gallery, New Delhi)

Curatorial intervention that marks ‘Lens-ing It’

The concept of the new show, entitled ‘Lens-ing It’, evolved over a period of time in the mind of its curator Johny ML who found the use of photography in most art forms he tackled so pronounced that one could not have wished away such presence and prominence.

However, as rightly observed by the curator, the treating of photography as one of the aides or tools for doing something else posed an interesting problematic before me and it was during the same period I noticed how so many galleries in India and elsewhere started taking an added interest in photography, photomontages, photo collages and digital works based on photography.

The curatorial essay by Johny ML elaborates: “As far as my understanding goes, lens based artists are not those people who are ‘good at machines’. They are artists with a purpose and perspective. While they adopt strategies in framing their images, perhaps more than a studio based artist, they face challenges of a different sort.

Between the momentary-ness of the image or the posed finality of the tableaux and the photography artist, there lies a series of spaces that have to be negotiated within the span of a click by the artist. Perhaps, for a studio based artist, he or she gets more time to deal with it.

In this project at New Delhi based Ashna Gallery, my curatorial intervention was to gather a ‘series’ from each photography artist. By a ‘series’ what I mean is a set of photographs taken in one go or over a period time in which the photography artist continue to be led by one particular aspect of his visual, ideological and aesthetical searches.

Perhaps, this focus of the artist could be in a way an extension of his/her philosophy and aesthetics as reflected in their oeuvres. But by the curatorial focus, this one particular ‘series’ becomes a point of departure as well as arrival, which could supply a clue or a key to extensively analyze the works of the photography artist in question. Interestingly, all these photography artists in this show have been consistently following certain ideological as well as aesthetical aspect of photography throughout their creative career so far."

(Information and essay courtesy: curator Johny ML for Ashna Gallery, New Delhi)

A show that accounts for aesthetical considerations of photography

As we know that there have been concerted efforts from different parts of India to promote contemporary photography, still contemporary photography is subjected to a confused viewing as a variety of genres of photography impact upon people differently on a daily basis.

Generally, even in the academic circles, photography is divided into different categories as per the fields to/in which the medium is put to use; for example we have news photography, fine art photography, industrial photography, fashion photography and so on. Though for the sake of classification such distinctions could be allowed, it would be interesting to see photography as a holistic medium which could carry a multitude of socio-cultural and politico-aesthetical dynamics.

Right from political propaganda to gender positioning and from family albums to documentations, when put to use, photography plays a very pivotal role of cultural encoding. This is the reason why, curator Johny ML, chose to call a new group show, ‘Lens-ing It’ at Ashna Gallery, New Delhi.

It includes a show of eight artists – namely Abul Kalam Azad, Manisha Gera Baswani, Deepak John Mathew, Alex Fernandes, Sunil Gupta, Ram Rahman, Anup Mathew Thomas, Vivek Vilasini, who use ‘photography as photography’; they are lens based artists and often use their photographic prints as their final product.

All aesthetical considerations and problems that otherwise faced and solved by any other visual artist too are dealt by these photography artists with an equal verve as expected of this medium and the context in which this medium is used. The politics, social positioning and the gender preferences of the photographers play a very strong role in the formulation of frames and the images.

Photography has always been there in the field of fine arts but the tendency is to treat it as something lesser to other forms of art. Today, in the globalized scenario, photographs have become the message carriers of change. Photographs speak to the people directly and the photography artists have become all the more aware of their worth as meaning makers. For me photographing is a political act.

(Information and essay courtesy: curator Johny ML for Ashna Gallery, New Delhi)

Dhruva Mistry’s stunning sculptures and Dialectal Image series

A few of Dhruva Mistry bronzes (1987 – 1990) in a new exhibition at Grosvenor Vadehra are maquettes he made for larger public sculptures. For instance, ‘Woman 3’ is a study for one his most important large scale pieces called The River, which is located in Birmingham. This sculpture has been affectionately nicknamed ‘Floozie in the Jacuzzi’ by the locals. He depicts a bold classical idealized form of a reclining female nude sitting in the middle of a large fountain. Whilst this is perhaps the most used form in sculpture, Mistry was able to add to some qualities to it that were truly unique to him.

Dhruva Mistry’s Dialectal Image series is also included in this exhibition. This series differs from the other works as they are assemblages or collages of metal and forms. Despite being disparate objects they join to form a whole in this instance as in most of Misty works the human figure. The term ‘dialectal’ means a version of a language; in this instance it means a version of a sculpture or image.

In this series there are strong references to tribal imagery, particularly the masked figures, which in turn are a reference to Picasso who was the joint founder of Cubism. Although cerebral, he was known to have been inspired by tribal art. The concept of Cubism was to incorporate on the two dimensional image the various images of an object just as the mind does. For example when we think of an apple we think of it from every angle not just as a flat image.

When it came to sculpture Picasso turned to Julio Gonzales with whom they recreated the language of sculpture by re assembling or constructing an object rather than traditional sculpture in clay which is based upon on modeling. What Picasso and Gonzalez did was to revolutionize sculpture and allow artists such as Richard Serra and Anthony Caro to push the boundaries. Here he is doing the same…

(Information courtesy: Grosvenor Vadehra)

Bewildering bronzes by Dhruva Mistry

London based Grosvenor Vadehra presents a show of bronze sculptures by artist Dhruva Mistry drawn from the Nigel Greenwood collection, comprising important works that he made during his stay in London from 1987-1990.

Nigel Greenwood (1941-2004), an influential gallerist, spotted and nurtured several important artists including Christopher Le Brun, Stephen Cox and Gilbert & George, and of course, the work by Dhruva Mistry. He had two solo exhibits of the latter’s works at his gallery. By the second one in 1990, the talented artist had established himself as a force in British sculpture.

He was commissioned to make many large public works and won several competitions in the field. Some of the large-scale prominent sculptures include the Sitting Bull in Liverpool, Diagram of an Object (Second State), Churchill College, Cambridge, The River and The Guardians in Victoria Square Gardens in Birmingham. The latter is perhaps his most iconic work, depicting two stone guardians and the reclining nude in the fountain, dominating the main central square in the city of Birmingham.

Elaborating on Dhruva Mistry’s career graph, a press release mentions: “He started exhibiting his works while he was still a student at the University of Baroda in1974. Soon after, he was awarded a scholarship to attend the Royal College of Art in London. Here he met and integrated into the emerging generation of artists who went on to dominate art scene in London in the late 80s. In 1984, the artist went on to become an artist in residence at Kettle’s Yard Gallery with a Fellowship at Churchill College, Cambridge, where he was exposed to works by important British sculptors and painters. While he lived in London for sixteen years, it was these early experiences that influenced his work during the period under consideration (1987-1990) for the show.”

In 1997 Mistry returned to India and joined his alma mater in 1999 as the head of Sculpture and Dean in the Faculty of Fine Arts until 2002. This marked a turning point in his career as he sacrificed his career in the London art world. The return to academia enriched his sensibilities but resulted in less time for his work. At the same time a newer generation of ambitious younger artists began to dominate the burgeoning Indian art scene.

(Information courtesy: Grosvenor Vadehra)