Review

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• 
• 

Two Poetic Shows

Kavitha Balakrishnan visits to quite interesting shows at Gallery OED, Kochi, ‘Revisit’ of ‘ORE-substance of earth’, a solo show by Rajan Krishnan and ‘letter from an unknown girl’ by two up coming artists Koumudi Patil and Poorna Rajpal. ‘Revisit’ is a memory of an eventful and immediate past in the life of an artist, whereas ‘letter from an unknown girl’ is a search of two artists to explore the various possibilities of intimate materials, says Kavitha.

Very poetic shows are presented in Gallery OED Kochi, during this August.  Conceptualised by Johny ML, one is an interesting ‘Revisit’ of ‘ORE-substance of earth’, Rajan Krishnan’s recent solo show at Bodhi space, Mumbai. It was also the inaugural show of ‘OED Basement’, the extended new space for alternative practices.  The other show happens in Gallery OED in the upstair of the building and it is ‘letter from an unknown girl’ in which Johny quite ambitiously presents two up coming artists Koumudi Patil and Poorna Rajpal.

Memory becomes a significant act when it materialises its intimate spells. Both these shows engage memory, though in quite different ways.

In a way, ‘Revisit’ is a memory of an eventful and immediate past in the life of Rajan Krishnan as an artist. One can also see that his project by and large attempts to activate ‘time’ in some sort of socio-historical contexts. So, ‘revisit’ is at once personal and social with a further vindicated premise of photographs and video presented for the viewer.

Let it be in an artist’s professional life or in somebody’s everyday life, it is a prolonging re-assurance, participating in a process of collective labour and simultaneously looking at oneself as a participator. So revisit’ becomes very engaging presentation for both the artist and the viewers alike. Nobody will go without fondling the little terracotta pieces of curious shapes in hand with some intimacy. It is irresistible that one also visually experience the magnanimity of a piled up presence of such lovely ‘felt shapes’. And you have photographs on the opposite wall vindicating the way many people made these little objects. They are from various walks of life. You may identify some of them if you are familiar with the kind of local art world in Kerala- art college students, art lovers, inquisitive children and other people - who both floated and camped on and often at Eroor, a place in Ernakulam where Rajan set up a workplace for three months. They had experienced the fun of freely playing with clay. All tiny objects were baked in kiln and packed in wooden boxes prepared at the work site with the help of assorted people. All the photos show some sort of labour evoking a collective mood. Some look like neo-realist film shots too.
Gone are those times when clay was regarded as a quintessential material in life. Labouring with this material also has transited long way through pre-industrial real life experience and quite politicised and romanticised industrial realist experience. Now creating a particular space to activate past is definitely nostalgic. Nostalgia is not always bad as far as it doesn’t generate sedentary.  If it kindles ‘the social’ in the personal lives of people in the age of seclusions, it is even remarkable. 

Further, it is interesting to look at a man’s efforts to document, retrieve and doubly do something. That pressingly and positively touches upon an immanent demand for re-allocation in his practices. ‘what is it so pressingly demanding a revisit’ is another natural question. This may be an effort to place one’s perspectives in correct slots to yield desired better effect for the whole activity. It can be an interlude ruminating over the artist’s own past practices to collect better and more genuine threads. More importantly, there remains the whole problematic of ‘human participation’ in the ‘post-mechanised’ and ‘post-progress’ world. However, there is definitely a strong sense of sharing and intimacy deeply felt at many levels in this show. So let us look for what Rajan does next. ‘Revisit’ definitely accentuates our interest in him.
‘Letter from an unknown girl’ is a show of two talented artists who deal basically with written forms or ‘text-forms’. Both these artists explore what intimate materials can do to an artist. One can see the variety of that possibility. A striking feature is that both these artists are guided through the processes that are regarded typically ‘girly’. Romantic and sentimental elements are explored. Rains, letter writing, needle work and simple everyday objects like pillows and tops array in their own humble ways. Nothing is overtly disquieting us in these painters’ world, perhaps. Rather both these women explore a liquid state of their existence. There is a sense of fluidity literally felt through these works.  Poorna Rajpal sinks in an interesting ‘pigment-made’ abstract world. There is a levity one suddenly slips into. There is an interesting play with the materiality of pigments that suddenly looks hung like webs and shadows.
Kaumudi Patil has crossed the limits of painting in some other curious ways. Her work of ‘pillow’ is a lovely object with deep undercurrents of a mind that is caught between narrative sentimentality and iconicity of object hood. And this state of self helps perhaps produce many contingent strategies to bring in soft romantic and girly state of affairs. She does interesting needlework on paper too. A faculty for design in IIT Kanpur, she demonstrated an interesting formal finish to her works.
‘Letter from an unknown girl’ does not necessarily assume any easily identifiable problematic. These are fresh and pretty work in many ways. It is really nice if an artist enquires the possibility of ‘pretty minds’ in this world, one may feel. There is a literal co-existence of different discourses in this show. It is extremely clean a one to see! And that is why one became silent and relaxed at the presence of these works though I went to see the show on the buzzling day, the walls were getting measured and ready for the works to hang for the viewer. There was indeed a certain solace that one experiences within one’s own deepset ‘girly-ness’ may be.

I am thinking that this show might give different experience to ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ often carried secretly within women and men. Is it a gendered show, then? Possibly, but harmlessly, I feel. As Johny the curator said that day in an informal chat, even if it is ‘letter from a famous girl’, it may not make much difference. Then just for the sake of a countering pleasure, I started muttering, ‘Letter from an unknown boy’. Ha! I find it more interesting to think like that with these same art objects. One can’t forget lovely boys and their letters, can one? Memories evoked then had many stuff in similar to these paintings. 

There is such personal space open to the viewer in the works of both Poorna Rajpal and Kaumudi Patil. It does not let us stoop to sentimental or romantic excess. But like hearing strange tones from a remote past, it evokes memories of reverie in anybody’s life.