Arzan Khambhatta's microworld

At Arzan Khambhatta's show in the city: Micropolis and Microbilrium

I recall the first scrap sculpture I have seen in my life at Nariman Point. So, yes, I remembered the artist's name very well. So, when Arzan Khambhatta's show was announced, I wanted to wander in there too.. I like to see an artist's work if it throbs for me. Then I try to think of what he may have thought of when he created what he has.  In abstract and modern art work that is quite a puzzle:) But if it clicks for me, and I have a Aha moment, I feel good. I don't know if  my Aha moment coincides with that of the artist's moment of epiphany.  But I like to pause before a work and wonder at the layers beyond the asymmetry, or symmetry within the lack of it.  I like the connection that this gives me with the artist... It sounds too vague to be termed art appreciation... I recall how when the arty reviewers were let loose amongst us feature writers at Sunday Times we used to chuckle into our kerchiefs at how pompous some writers were.. They were only talking to themselves, excluding the rest of us crass humanity. That was something:)  Then these writers were eclipsed when Times decided that art appreciation was not necessary for a money-making paper.. So, now I miss those writers and their use of words like palimpsest, damn!!!

Any case, for me Khambhatta's work was something. His creations scaled down from the monster size they assume, like bejewelled men, shining with chrome, swinging from steel. Microbilirium -- swinging from a finger... flying high, let loose, free. Mmmm, seems like yoga of the mind to me:)
The micropolis had different stories -- sometimes  the man synergizing with the city, sometimes crushed by it, sometimes holding it back, sometimes being burdened by it. The disturbing one of one headless... ruthless control? Heavens, I was trying to guess, but it was great fun, to peek somewhere, into another mind, like unravelling a puzzle.
U can still catch that show at Museum Gallery, at Kala Ghoda, off Jehangir Art Gallery.

Visiting European art masters: did the city miss them or wat!!

                                    Rhapsody, by Michael Wilkinson

Typically, and shamefully enough, the media in Mumbai ignored this event, of contemporary European artists who also piggybacked on Auguste Rodin's statues for an exhibition at the Galleria at Trident, on till this week.

The reasoning behind such media blackout starts with the leader of the pack deciding to spend media ink only on events where the paper gets paid!! Thinking like a pauper, these sad sacks!

Since everybody copies the leader (he makes money, which helps him buy art, which he admires, but which he believes is not for the hoi polloi, that is u and I:) So that denies, me, the reader of a lot of things happening in the city.

Media is becoming a yawn -- between rapes, politicians, paid copies -- the reader's craving for something more -- art, science, events in the city, culture -- has to be buried. U can only hear the dirge between the sheets.

Barring Mid-day I don't know if others covered it, which just goes to how how sadly blind media is to their potential, but wasted, contribution towards a city's art consciousness. It is a collective shame that nothing happens in Mumbai -- or so the citizens believe - barring Bollywood and that trash consumes all over collective eyeballs...

Any case, it was a small exhibition... I recall in wonder Rhapsody by Michael Wilkinson, the hands that have become symbolic of Lorenzo Quinn's art (I am still reeling at the layers of love he got to portray with just two hands:), Auguste Rodin's statues, and Damien Hirst Butterflies and medical paraphernalia...

Quinn's art: depicting love -- from first love (bottom), trust (second last), eternum (third last)
Of the lot, I loved Wilkinson's rhapsody for its lyrical lines, the sense of fragility of love through the acrylic lit up cunningly from below. The Quinn hands still have me in thrall -- trust, eternum (lasting love), first love... so beautiful. Some images here are just representative since I wanted to convey some of the wonder, of what you may have missed, if u did not see this show:(

(Damien Hirst, butterflies, pills and medical paraphernalia)

Now I am also a Warli artist

As a deprived kid (who refuses to grow up) I always splurge on arts-for-kids kit. I have bead-makers, clay kits, moulds, mirror makers, science kits, and anything else you can think of. I simply cannot resist them. I always was artistically inclined (ha, we all think that) and only reason did not become Husain was because I was deprived (ha, we always think that too:)...
Any case while trying to pick up some prosaic notebooks for my daughter I saw this amazing Warli kit.. Resisting it, since these days I am mostly broke (being a yoga teacher) I returned home. But, then, that kit and my deprived childhood colluded together so much so that I was dragged back to that very same stationary shop and had to, simply had to, pick up this Warli kit for kids. I love it: it has clay thingies on which you may paint, but though I still have not laid ink on clay, I bought the kit for the book on how-to Warli yourself.

While a journalist I had wandered, with one of those agents who work these tribals, in Adivasi land and saw those amazing Warli wall pieces (natural paints like mud for that red tint) that the Adivasi women paint on those simple hut walls. Apparently done on some major occasion, like a wedding. But you know how human kind works: these women did it for free and for the love of it, and for being part of the community and all that. But the minute it got itself as commercially paying, the men step in and become cat of the walk:) See how most famous chefs are men? So also, in Warli art most of the painters who do the commerical pieces are men -- they are the one who get to Germany or Europe or wherever else the agent would take them, to showcase tribal Indian art.

Any case, it was fabulous to wander about in Adivasi country, huts far from one another. Where, in that rolling green -- hillocks and soft valleys and an occasional sliver of a sparkling waterfall -- that makes rural Maharashtra so beautiful and heart-stopping, you are lulled into sushegaad ( a state of mental siesta:) by the sight of lazy dragonflies floating over rich, tall grass. And in that seeming emptiness be surprised by a lone hut, and even more happily surprised by its hidden flare-up of this rich art. Glorious. It was what made journalism so fulfilling for me, those days:)

Any case somebody who liked that article of mine gifted me a huge Warli painting -- It had amazing scenes -- a woman being dragged by her man, by her hair!! Physical encounters.. Stuff like that you normally don't see in the clinically cleaned up Warli art available all over... it was a piece that told real stories. Apparently, real Warli art has these double entendre too... stories of money lenders, land-grabbers (from a rich, shrinking community in Mumbai) who would bribe these simple men with a bottle or two of alcohol.. Where such a conniving man may be shown as a rat etc.. That sort of real stories. But that painting of mine, which was layered in that special way, got burnt in the terrible fire in my house. My loving husband, sweet of him, later replaced that with another huge Warli piece. It adorns my hall wall -- but it is a tame one, compared to the riotous and rambunctious one I had...

Any case if you wish to gift a kid a nice kit, then this Wah Re Wah Warli is a good bet I would think -- I paid Rs 349 for my piece. There is a smaller one on offer for Rs 225...
Check out this link for what else the kit contains etc... It is marketed by Pegasus international I have this number on my kit, in case u wish to place an order: 326651661..

Happy painting...