KOCHI: Faces big and small, familiar yet strange, welcome you at Gallery OED. Self-portraits or not the works speak much about the evolution of the portrait as an art form in post-colonial India.
Titled Facets of a People the show, curated by Oindrilla Maity, shows you the different ways in which portraits have been conceived. They are not limited to mere individualistic aspects, but represent a social or political face or a collective psyche, mixing memories and fantasies, though the question of crossculture lingers in the medium, form or treatment.
Ten artists have explored the form, treating it in different ways. Much as they like to be objective, subjective elements creep in, reflecting social and political influences, and the awareness or self-realisation of the artist.
Bhagat Singh’s portraits of himself and another woman are quite interesting. The fantasies seen in the self-portrait are missing in his portrait of the woman. Bhagat is blowing a bubble which extends into a blowing horn out of which many human figures emerge and you see the many sides of life come alive.
You can trace the strong graphical quality in Abghijit Gupta’s work. His portraiture of women and men, augmented by words speak a lot about the haves and have-nots in society and his men are characterised by hollow tubular forms with open ends.
Shilpa Rangnekar’s portrait brings out the dual nature of the human kind.
Fond of photographs, Kedar Dondu finds his subjects in news articles and highlights them in water colour.
His ‘A Head for Trouble’ shows an arrow piercing the head of a Kenyan youth, a victim of ethnic violence there. His ‘Most Beautiful Bottom’ pokes fun at ‘most beautiful bottom in the world show’ held in Paris in November 2008.
Azis T M’s oils on canvas look like group photographs of social unrest in society though they are portraits of helpless segments in society.
Sujith tries to bring out the superficiality of the era in which the rich cultural heritage of the East has been invaded by the West and identities have been displaced.
Rajan Krishnan’s portraits of writers Vaikom Mohammed Basheer and Kamala Surayya with his powerful brush strokes bring out the power of their pen. He has captured their character, depiciting familiar aspects of the duo even as they look at us with a mysterious air. Gautam Choudhury, Simrin Mehra Aggarwal and Mahesh Baliga expose you to different styles of portrait making.
The works are in a way memorials to the ephemeral nature of life. The show will run through June 30.
surekha@epmltd.com