Blurring Boundaries

ARCHITECTURAL DRAWINGS FACE a cluster of paintings referencing astrology, palmistry and other Hindu beliefs. Pots made of wood and metal, displayed inside a steel-and-glass viewing box as though in a muse­um, foreground large, gorgeously obsessive paintings that look like they are woven from fabric. Elsewhere, installations come alive as you approach them, buzzing, moving, vibrating. If this gallery space is designed to gener­ate an array of personal responses to the changing patterns of urban society, then the commercial and the cultural coalesce in familiar, comforting ways in the rest of the building, which is a furniture studio featuring plush, linen-covered sofas, tables and design accents. DTALE ARCHIST is a new exhibition space for contemporary art, design and technology in Whitefield, Bengaluru—a 3,000 square feet white-cube gallery located in Sreejith Pathangalil’s expansive interior design store. Led by artist and curator Bose Krishnamachari, its inaugural exhibition features an eclectic selection—from a Sudarshan Shetty installation of gaping pots to Sunil Padwal’s lay­ered drawings placed in reclaimed frames, from artist Pooja Iranna’s line drawings of buildings and staple-pin structures to Prajakta Potnis’ ethereal paintings of mundane personal possessions. “It was always a dream to bring architecture, design, technology and painting together in a space like this. As an artist, I engage with other creative minds including writers, musicians and architects and I be­lieve it is important to collapse the barriers that stand between them,” says Krishnamachari. “I got kicked out of JJ School of Art because I questioned the status quo. And I learned how not to do things from Jehangir Art Gallery—in this white-cubian space we are in, the white space is just as important as the artworks, which are treated with sen­sitivity.” We chat sitting on modular interlinked chairs that can pivot on hinges to take any shape you want—they can form a closed circle or an arc, fan out into a bench, or allow you to sit on either side for a conversation. “This is one of the central pieces in the exhibition, designed by Tony Joseph, who is a contem­porary Indian architect with a practice called Stapati,” says Krishnamachari. The idea was to reference Indian design elements such as four-poster beds and lacquer-painted objects to create the perfect seating for a gathering, says Joseph, talking to excited architecture students who have come to see his work.

THIS IS THE kind of energy Krishnamachari wants to channel. As the cofounder of the Kochi Muziris Biennale, who has also curated a number of exhibitions across India, he wants the space to revel in the crosspollination of art, design, architecture and science. “From Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo to Tagore, artists through history have consistently blurred boundaries between different kinds of creative work. This idea needs reinventing now. That’s why we have brought back a forgotten word, ‘archist’,” says Krishnamachari, who also wants to host intersectional conversations. “I am also interested in the temporality of space—a gallery, for instance, is a temporal space.”

Nothing here is just one thing. A bizarre mechanical con­traption laden with LED diyas starts to perform deepa aradhana as you approach it and makes you halt in your tracks. Designed by Shailesh BR, a lapsed Havyaka priest from Shimoga, it is a meditation on his life before art school. “I followed in my father’s footsteps to study Sanskrit and become a priest. I had never seen machines growing up. This installation is a commentary on the monotonous routines of priesthood—priests always think about how much dakshina they will get if they perform an aarti but what if machines could take over some of these activities?” One is reminded of the electric drums and sensor lighting in ancient South Indian temples that epitomise the age of technology. Shailesh’s paintings—a cow drenching the world with her milk, a tiger skin rug, and astrological symbols—are just as discomfit­ing, questioning and underlining Hindu beliefs and rituals. There is another interesting sensor-based installation at the show—a stack of books and a glass of water that tremble and shake when one draws near. Krishnamachari says the gallery is like “Europe­an football, where you buy the best players and get them to play locally with local talents”. “We want to showcase works by some of the best names in the art world, such as Sudarshan Shetty, alongside those of promising artists who are experimenting with aesthetic languages and mediums. The materials that designers use, too, are very important and interesting. Take, for instance, this console and bench by architect Sandeep Khosla and graphic designer Tania Singh Khosla,” he says, pointing to beautiful concrete pieces inlaid with carved wood.

Among the largest works displayed on the walls are those of Harisha Chennangod, whose minimalist abstracts are almost like tapestries. “He comes from Kasaragod and he chooses his colours mindfully, inspired by theyyam and other art forms of Kerala. He is weaving colours with his mind and that is very poetic to me. Sometimes, when you look at the works from up close, they present illusions, so the work is both minimalist and maximalist,” says Krishnamachari.

Pathangalil, a self-taught artist, collector and interior designer, says art as part of living space is an idea whose time has come. “This space is an attempt to further align design with fine art. If all goes well, we want to open galleries in other cities,” says the soft-spoken entrepreneur. The urban concept of space itself is a theme that runs through the current exhibition. Are buildings civilising structures, safe spaces, contextual clues to the aesthetics of an era? The works of Pooja Iranna and Samira Rathod negotiate such questions even as, thanks to Krishnamachari’s composi­tional strategy, the machines populating the gallery make us wary of technology as a heralding force of the not-so-distant future. Conveying the momentous through the everyday, these artworks are an essential reflection on modernity.

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