The city has many parts, the small worlds (microcosms) in themselves and yet, the experience of a city is complete only when all the parts make the whole.
The theatre unfolds at once at many stage-s, where sets become props, and vice-versa, and the sets and props themselves become actors!
These are some early impressions on the current installation of the work, �Black to play and draw�.
The Sculptures were conceived as a chessboard; but in the process of the work, while the polemical importance of the title has remained intact, one realizes that the �chessboard� or the �game of chess� is the lemma (A theme, argument, or subject indicated in a title) and not the Schema.
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The repertoire of experiences: visual and sensual, of the ready-made as well as crafted objects and also of the stipulation of the � meanings� is what the artist arrives at.
This repertoire is not reposited, though.
Instead, it is installed as �the� work, wherein a statement : mutant or manifest, is supposed to be inherent.
The synthetic polyethylene fibers �versus� the ceramic clays. Competing smooth/rough textures of ceramics and plastics. Both armoured with qualities that enable human intervention to transmogrify, metamorphasise them.
Formed and deformed objects. The formed ones metamorphasising into the deformated. Sensuous forms vis-a-vis the nonsense ones.
Pedestals/plinths/bases turning into sculptures. Pedestals dominating the objects with colour; and still contemplating on their reflections.
Man/Nature is an old dichotomy. The artist looks for more recent mutations of the dualities within.
Through his �sensualised� and �nonsensicised� forms, he is perhaps questioning the politics within the gamut of �sthetics.
�I HAD ALWAYS WORKED WITH THE IDEA OF �CODES AND SIGNS� OR �ESTABLISHED NORMS AND SIGNATURES��, says Anant Joshi. The installation, �Black to play and draw�, does not seem to �celebrate� the codes and norms(as Joshi has earlier done, as a painter), but rather points towards the anomalies of both the �established� and �non-established� codes. The �Indian� or �oriental� sensibilities as though denoted in the �abstract� ceramic forms at once confront the defied �western� plastic toys, and to punctuate this battlescene are the fawns of small, usual-looking, seemingly �non-artistic� forms.
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The installation has another dimension, of lighting. Theatrical, because they ARE placed like footlights. Dramatic, because these studio-like floodlights work as if they were there FOR a photographic documentation of the installed objects.
The floods of light pervade all colours, all objects. The uni-directionality of light could have facilitated the interplay of the shadows WITHIN the work, thus making the objects intertwined with each other and with the ground- the pedestal. The artist denies this �inter�play to the painstakingly varied objects and pedestals he had devised. With lights at his disposal, he departs from the form/colour/texture/dimension within the conceived objects to explore the light/dark situation that develops according to the surrounding walls.
The photographs show us that the lights, at one point of their intensity, culminates into a shadow-play on the wall... the shadows look as if they are silhouettes drawn from of an Indian narrative painting (where there are no columns and rows like the comic books have, but the different groupings of figures tend to illustrate different scenes from the story).
What is the story about? is it about a place which denies an equal ground for all actors? or is it about a city, with all its microcosms blanketed in the dark of the night? Be it.
The dark, the Noir, the black, pervades through the lights.
The black has played, to draw.