CHENNAI: Do join us for a preview of paintings by Artist This or That”, reads the invitation. The form may have changed over the years. What had to be printed and posted with appropriate stamps has been reduced to a digital image, sent with a click of a button. Nevertheless, the significance of an art show opening, especially a solo exhibition, has remained the same. It is the artist’s magnum opus.
The culmination of a journey that lasted a year or more. Never pay heed to fancy proclamations by artists of not being concerned about the public acknowledgement of their work. No serious artist creates art to merely adorn their studio spaces. We yearn for our art to see the light of day. It is that sunlight that constantly beckons us, even in the darkest of times.
As the evening of the opening day fades, taking along the blinding glare of that sunshine with it, you look around, seeking familiar faces from your everyday life, but all you see are comrades from your tribe. Artists, art critics, art buyers (even if the last purchase was 30 years ago) they fill the room, wine glasses precariously balanced, engaged in heated conversations about art in contemporary times.
Where is that neighbour who constantly borrows tomatoes from your refrigerator, the friend who calls to fill you up on all that juicy gossip and those members from your WhatsApp group of which you have the honour of being an admin? Where are they all?? Later confrontations about their absence, often yield the truth, cloaked in flimsy excuses, the truth being that they would not have understood the art anyway.
This reluctance to visit stems from the incomprehension of art and the resultant flush of embarrassment at feeling intellectually inadequate on coming face to face with it. The ultimate purpose of art is to communicate, produce thinking and enrich the society we live in. How can that purpose be served if, braving all odds, that tomato-borrowing neighbour visits your show, only to encounter unfathomable art and concept notes, meant to provide explanations, that read as follows “These works deconstruct the aesthetic logic of constructions.
In this absurdity of nihility, ideas of duplexity are replaced without categorisations. Intersplicing fluxes of being often consume us....” What follows next is an expression that clearly states, “Why did I ever borrow those wretched tomatoes?!!”. Art has to be made accessible to the public is an oft-repeated statement. Unfortunately, this has merely meant placing art in public spaces.
It has never b e en ab out making i t comprehensible. It is not an impossible dream. The Kochi Biennale, which is an international art exhibition, held every two years, has done it by providing guides who explain the artworks to visitors. If this could be applied in all galleries, then fear and embarrassment would be replaced by curiosity and appreciation. A gallery could become a go-to destination. The day an art show turns alluring to the people who make up the hours of your existence, is the day when art truly becomes a part of life itself.
JITHA KARTHIKEYAN
Email: jithakarthikeyan2@gmail.com
(Jitha Karthikeyan is an artist and curator, passionate about making art accessible to the larger public)