Monologues and Dialogues: A host to art bearing (Part II)

In a Greek myth, Junoo curses Echo to repeat any dialogue that someone may begin with her. She, frustrated and in despair, submerges in the mountains and repeats back to us whatever we speak to her; what we call the 'echo'. Modern day conversations aren’t much different. We hear people repeat our opinions, sometimes because they want the conversation to end, sometimes to please us and most of the times because they don't have much of an opinion at all. Social media creates an illusion that we get to speak our mind, but mostly we ‘echo’ the trend; and get likes and praises that tell us what we have already said. In such a complexity of speech when it is difficult to have any conversation with others, let alone with self, a breath of fresh air is a dialogue that may be something close to real. Such is the art that I present here, bearing the marks of openness in a world foreshadowed by superficial reality. In continuation to my previous blog, I put forth the work during the quite residency, Dialogue with Nature. I have found a special attraction to this effort firstly for its art for art outcome and secondly because of the sheer naivety of the artists effort. With more than ten artists participating I may not be able to give justice to all the artists, thus would be refereeing to a few works that made space in my mind and give gist of what took place.

                                
                                                              Boski's coloured pebbles


                                                    
                                                    Darshan's on route stone composition

                              
                                      Milind painting the stone which he unites with god

The rural area provided a wide range of options in terms of material and space and thus to contain oneself to one particular idea itself was a challenge. The immediate material was stone and this there have come out a number of interesting stone formations and paintings in this residency. The formations are certainly not extremely new, but have an interesting bearing in terms of their placements.
This idea was further continued in Ashutosh’s work where he began collecting stones softened and glazed by the perennial running stream. A small constellation look-alike merged under water, that also gave illusion of movement with the light water ripples.

                                       


                                  Ashutosh Kambli, installation with stones under the stream

                                          
                                              Ajinkya Patekar, Taking the print from stone

                                 
Ajinkya’s work which began with taking imprints of drawing made in stone went further to an expedition based performance that took the group uphill and down in the baths of mud. Submerged in water and clad in clay, the performance took all to the origins of self beyond the varsities of the performance that one does, every day of living. The verse is based on the call by nature and wanders the mountains around, ending in the pool of mud. Although the pictures here do not do much justice to the real event, the words that express the inquiry cause much satisfaction. Some part of it goes thus:
                                                 
                                                     Ajinkya Patekar's ode to nature (last verse)




              Stills from the performance based on call of nature, conceptualized by Ajinkya

Milind, who is responsible for materializing of this residency has continued with his subversion in the existing landscape which are so mute that may go missing by a casual eye. Using the more than enough rice husk, he made his own crude paper and painted the forms of immediate notice, of stones that become gods and of stones that are gods in nature. He makes use of colours obtained from locally used powders, works reflect the colours of immediate landscape.

                                      
                                                       Milind Shid making paper

                             
                                    Drawings with organic colours on handmade paper

Charan actually toyed with the making of mud-dung plastered wall and created forms of rural living that would be absent soon. The whole idea of creating a self-destructive work of art represents the ephemeral village life. He sees beauty in existing forms and simple displaces them for closer viewing. What else would be more appropriate in being one with nature, creating and destroying and repeating itself for ages gone and coming!

                                     
                               Charan making paste of clay and cow dung for the mural


                             Charan Jadhav's Mural depicting the surrounding living

                  
                                                                       Ciby's Trees

                                               
                                                          Harshad's Singing Tree

A lone, leaf-shed silver glazed tree was quite a muse for the artists and would require a special mention as the interpretation in works of Ciby and Harshad. Ciby enhances the grey sliver of the branches against an intriguing, silent and yet forthcoming redness on a shredded uncouth paper. The up and down paths find a way into his earthy hued works as also the close associations with the late harvest environ. While Harshad is seen fascinated by the sound in and of the tree which he captures with miniature drawings in ink. It is mesmerizing to see how the same tree could have markedly separate dialogues with two young minds simultaneously.
An intrusive and dominating work was has been a painting by Darshan, though done previously deserves a mention, inspired by the local women, tough and rough to the exterior yet as effervescent and joyful as the early spring flower. The large scale of this work demarcates the presence of tribal across their terrain and the quite shadows sunlit with solar yellow show how they merge in nature as if never distinct.


                                Darshan Mahajan's Local Woman with a yellow flower

Below are works of Tanvi and Rohit, an interesting attempt to create impressions of the experienced space.
                                           
                                           Tanvi Pujari's work inspired by designs on houses

                                                  
                   Rohit Mestry's subtle expression of peep through the window in city and rural

Although my minimal words hardly give the complete experience of the actuality, I hope it would cause enough interest for further probing into artists and their creations. For these thinkers, please visit:https://www.facebook.com/Dialogue-With-Nature-342316559669242/ for more insight into the artworks. And for the ones who are not content, have an open invitation to attend and begin a tête-à-tête with nature and art in the next residency!
This blog would never be complete without acknowledging the efforts of Raj and Suraj, the camera and film editing duo who were on there feet for all the seven days and have captured the whole process to the effect that the outcome becomes an artwork in itself.


                            Hemant Gavankar, Small landscapes grouped together

Hemant’s work I would mention here at the end as he presents a cumulative experience of the whole discourse, painting small sections of diverse spaces at different times of the day from different angles and varied viewpoints. Thus comes the grid like structure that has the skyline at the top, mountain ranges in the middle and ends at the ground. Combined beautifully in low relief with paper folds, the work gives a exemplary ending to any conversation and begins the dialogue with the artist who spoke to nature.


(from left to right, standing) Raj Wavdankar, Harshad Mumbaikar, Hemant Gavankar, Rahul Patil, Boski Kubadiya, Ajinkya Patekar, Ganesh Shid, Ashutosh Kambli, Darshan Mahajan, Abhishek Acharya, Salman Shaikh, Milind Shid, Charan Jadhav, Amol Takle, Suraj Patil, Tanvi Pujari.
(from left to right, sitting ) Ciby Samuel, Rohit Mestry, Jitendra Patil

Check out for the short trailer: https://www.facebook.com/342316559669242/videos/257417875127867/?epa=SEARCH_BOX