On 09/09/17 an exhibition mainly focusing the Drawings Sketches and Scribbles of two Kalabahvana teachers started at nandan Gallery here in Santiniketan. Both of these artists are worth noticeable at the process of their art where they maintains to balance with the experimental and traditions of Indian Art. These artists while sticking to the form based traditions of Saniniketan; exemplifies the process based contemporaneity. That’s the point, where these artist comes to highlight for a reportable textual content. I have visited the putting up of the show and, I could see a prevailing glee in the arrangement of the works. The sheer enthusiasm in displaying the simple and elegantly mounted works made me think of a blog entry on the moment;I visited gallery..even before the show got inaugurated.
I like the way people display the works. That’s why when ever I wants to document a show ; I try to see the people’s response to the work as palpable objects. Dilipda’s ( the way we call our teachers in Santiniketan is by adding a “da”/”di” to the name. It simply shows the warmness of the relationship”) works were handled with love and respect. In many shows I have seen people mis-handling works.. Just like a duty they have to execute. But here the delicate drawings , scribbles..minute and miniature sources of works.. were brought to galley as if they are handling cute little kittens… Ya sure if you are lucky to be here before 17th September there you will get to see literally cute little kittens..!!!. Before I write some thing of the works of Dilip da I would like to Quote something from PankajDa’s(Prof. Pankaj Panwar) words which I over heard while visiting one of the displays of our sculpture students. Students Displayed the immediately available fruits, vegetable and other natural forms, worked it in clay and displayed with randomly looking real leaf installations. At the first look there was a contrast of the real and sculpted. I got curios to listen what PankajDa was commenting. He said.. “ the form could showcase the vitality of the object… Or it could hold the life- pulsating and full of the Vital forces” that was one moment I got in to a deep thought about the life content that form in this schooling carries in its spacial formation of the Santiniketan atmosphere, both in its formal and textual epistemology.
Dilipda’s sketches and scribbles remained me about his smile. He is pleasant almost all the time I have seen him.Shortly after the inauguration he was busy with a lot of questions and interviews. I got bit nervous in this rush. I stepped back and waited until i could get him alone. It was when I made a second round in the galley space and started looking at Sahjahanda’s works. He started to talk with a smile “these are not my works.. These are shahjahan’s.. “ I laughed.. I told I know … We smiles and then he started to talk about the practice. These scribbles and sketches are put up intentionally to showcase the conceptual space that works behind our works. Some times when the sources and outputs are displayed together it makes greater meanings. Yes in the concept of Dilip Da these tiny little spaces of sketchbook we quite often forget to keep are the Origin points of our creative energy. Fine art is like Classical Music he adds;
“when the Sur” tonality” is good ; it doesn’t need to understand what scale or harmony it have.. But important is whether it evokes a sentiment inside some one .. Some one; not even bothered about the ragas/sargas.. Or lyrics. So the act of art is working like santal family or Mill call which evokes same excitement in a viewer whether he is trained in art or not..it doesn’t need a guided walk as such to communicate other than if we leave its construction, medium, creative language aspects and other technicalities .Its very much similar to Nature and its Natural communication. For Example if there is a tree, for some one its the color of the tree..For some its the form that fills the space or for some its the memories that fills in the mind and for some it could be all above stated together in a mix stature. Painting is having this similar Nature..I think Painting should be like nature”.
Dilipda’s works were simple in the first looks as we tries to enter int to it. It vigorously questioned the way we look at how we deal with the spaces surrounding those simple things. Spaces in visual and textual world. Spaces of reality and spaces of dreams. I could categories the drawing of Dilip Da into two types; one of the type showed animals that we could find in and around Santiniketan and the others were his experience based scribbles from travels places etc.. It created the indented tension and a peaceful out look at the same time.
Then I moved to Sahajahanda. my gallery experience with the works of this artist was close to heart. I felt like some of the works are most touched in the corners of my mind as if i have done those. It showed sublime external features and contained the burning sensation from within. When I say burning how far one can think of the burn. Its still shows that burns in one way or the other. We started our talk with the sources of his inspiration. All the media news television up to social media acts as a redundant source in his works .. These memories from our interactions with mediatic space and communications remains in our inner consciousness. Layered and turbulent.. This subconscious is what comes out when we work. This is most visible when we scribble. He pointed me towards one series which I had specially noticed, lately during my walk;
“I had very much liked in the making process. These are Landscape .. Objects and things which you can identify. If you look close there are a lots of sources in this. The interesting fact is that if we are not drawing out those sources those are lost..some times in the lack of that preservation its lost for ever. In that way also the scribbles and sketches are very important. While preserving them it might be abstract.. Like an abstract we want to make before doing the big essay.. A brief…”
Then I asked him: why its looks like a paragraph in form..?
Yes definitely it gets the shape of its existence in brain.. clumsy crippled and coagulated. he continued. Some times it may be serious .. Some times it may not be.. But you have to look close and seriously to these sketches to find what could be painted next. This is what I do for most of the time in my studio space. And these sketches shows what I am thinking”.
Sahajahan’da’s works shows the aesthetic resources he possess…Either I could be reading the outputs of his works especially those etchings; as a dance of the lovely duos with graceful sync, which may denote the mutual interaction of beings in relationship… or I could read the violence that prevails in the anxious in between-ness of those dances. I might be sticking to the latter,.
I could link between what Dayanita singh once told me about Importance of editing table for a photographer. A photographer’s real creative process according to her is not on lazy shots or highly paid sessions in studio. but it starts when these shots are put up in to thumbnail size miniatures and put together in a table surface. I could sense it on another demonstration she had in Delhi where she demonstrated the editing session of the thumbnail size photographs. She is very sensitive to her table. Some students were lazily siting on of her table she displayed with Photographs .She got disturbed to see the students sitting carelessly as if as they disturbed the ‘table’. She shoots frenzy numbers of photographs . The toughest part is to select the images from those thumbnails.
I think for the painter that selection happen in two layers. one editing table is when you put together all your mental images .. Memories in your invisible “identity table” and selects your out put.. Another selection is when you put together your source and references to make a composition. Free and relaxed scribbling could eliminate these two stage selection to certain extent. When you scribble your subconscious works, at some point of this subconscious is a very advanced “You-Being”.
By the end of this review I want to add what Dayanita told about the choosing and editing you do on a table.
“Let it be the written materials.. Let it be the drafts.. sketches or thumbnail photographs.. If you are not choosy on what you select there is no difference between me and a four year old with smart phone camera in her hand calling herself as the photographer”.
…….
“These are the times of troubles”. SahajahanDa don’t even wanted to complete the words… I could sense what he meant by troubles. When I read what he told me about mediatic influence and what he wanted to convey by exhibiting his seventeen year old fire burned canvases… I could easily read these are not the dances of merry what he is showing. Above all he had mentioned about the burning and burnt places in canvas what he had fixed with a binder. While pointing towards one of these places of burn; he told .. “Its seventeen years old.. Still appropriate right..?” That burn was in my mind. These are relations ships of forms in pain which tries to over come the pain by it’s movements. There are more similarities in thinking pattern of sahajanda and manida. Apart from the arrangements of motifs they share the spirit of the epistemology I stated earlier in this blog; a tradition in contemporary. I think that’s the main importance of this show to look in to the spaces we left blank…Intentionally… as in the drawings of Dilipda… Or Spaces burned.. the spaces which needs an binder… As Sahjahanda expresses.. Art is “Turbulent” Inside.
Anudev.M
Research Scholar, Dept.Painting , Kalabhavana , Santiniketan
Crystal Ball 