New Delhi: Life-size canvases with strong
figurative forms - whose inherent masculinity filled up the pictorial space
with an overpowering sense of physicality - is what artist Shruti Gupta
Chandra has been famous for. In her latest solo show titled Counter Gaze,
however, she springs a surprise with a marked turn in her oeuvre. The
scale of her work remains the same – some works as large as 6 feet by 5 feet
– and so does the ideology of articulating her concern about human life
within fast growing urban spaces but now this political/gender critique appears
in subtle tones. To achieve this effect, she has moved away from her earlier
indulgence with the homo-centric figurative language and explores a far more
abstract pictorial language full of grids and staircases.
The
show is being presented as the launch show of a new art gallery in Delhi - Gallery
Artspeaks India - and will be held at Galerie Romain Roland, Alliance
Francaise from September 29 till October 6, 2011 after which
it will continue at Gallery Artspeaks India, 5, New Delhi from October 11 till
October 31, 2011.: www.artspeaksindia.com
Says
Ashwini Pai Bahadur, Director, Artspeaks India: “For the last decade or so I have been an admirer of Shruti’s
paintings through several avatars
as collector, buyer, admirer and critic and hence it was the natural choice to
host her solo show for the gallery’s launch exhibition. Her non conformist
subjects and technical brilliance make the same urban jungle where we
have both met an endearing piece of art.”
Says
Shruti Gupta Chandra: “While it is
obvious that urbanisation is undertaken for the welfare
of human beings, we also can’t doubt that it often contributes to their
suffering. It is this irony of human existence that I have tired to capture in
my work.”
One
person divides into many. One individual gets fragmented and develops - as
curator Johny M.L puts it - a ‘mutiplicity’ in this complex/ed urban society.
The dichotomy arises when this same individual living in this teeming
metropolis is nevertheless, alone. Faced with his aloneness and the rapid
breakdown of relationships that are life giving, he searches for sustenance.
Added to this is the strange amalgam of the old and new- the erosion of all
that one held sacred- values, principles, ideals- by the invasion of a brittle
brightness. We build ‘castles in the air’, ‘we hope to find’, ‘we wait, we
believe’… But despite all this, he is not just a victim. He has an inner
intrinsic strength that enables him to cope and sustain, and also hope.
Hence,
urban spaces, their importance as an aspirational desire, the human angst they
create and the fact that they are slowly but aggressively taking over rural
spaces is what forms the core of Shruti’s work. In a large-sized acrylic on
canvas (40x70 inches) titled, I Hope To Find, she acknowledges, through
symbolism of staircases, that this intrusion is changing the rural landscape,
affecting their climatic balance and even rewriting their history.
In another
work, made up of four panels of 40 inches each, titled Castles in the Air,
the flight of stairs seems to take the climber into ideal space; an ideally
transformed urban space where everyone is given equal rights and justice.
Says
curator Johny M.L: “This image of a
flight of spiral stairs appears in four different frames that constitute a
single work, and in each frame the stairs show a different possibility of
movement. For a viewer it is almost like looking at the same scene from
different physical distances. The artist plays up a virtual zooming for
aesthetic reasons and the twist is rendered when in one of the frames she
abstracts the flights into a stream of paper like filings.”
This
imagery of stairs, in fact, sets the tone of her latest series of works.
In one of her diptychs, titled I Tried to Climb Yesterday, Shruti
directly deals with the histories of a new urban space as set against the
backdrop of an old urban space. A honeycomb-like architectural space is
depicted to suggest the history of an old city within which the new city takes
shape in the form of a pair of sophisticated stairs. Shruti does not tell the
viewers where the stairs are leading them to. Instead, she gives certain visual
clues where the tension and the lethargy of the human beings felt and
experienced in such spaces are suggested through the images of a sleeping dog
and a hand that tugs at a string stretched on the right top edge of the
painting. The depiction of two principles, the active and the passive ones
embodies the character of the two cities; the old and the new. And the painting
has the capability of hinting at the possible tensions resulted out of such interfacing.
What
is also visually arresting in this new body of work is how the artist has used
‘grids’ to deconstruct existing realities. Unlike in her earlier works, she
builds a lot of grids on her pictorial space so that a viewer can negotiate her
reality in both an aesthetic and philosophical way. In works such as Towards
And Away and The Folds Opened Out, these grids, almost having the
serenity of a gauche on paper or linen, could be interpreted as the abstract
representations of the urban-scapes.
Says
Johny M.L: “Grids create a filter and
ground of moderation through which the realities could be negotiated, captured
and re-constructed in novel fashions. Artists of the post-modern times have
effectively used the possibilities of grids, both virtual and real ones, in
their works. The apparent haziness or the presence of a transparent veil like
coat over these works in fact provides a general ‘grid space’ to them even when
the artist does not consciously create grids of negotiation in geometrical shapes.”
One
can find Shruti’s involvement with the beauty of the human body in most of
these works too, although considerably moderated and muted. While she has
chosen to now create visual planes of abstract color schemes, she incorporates
solidly drawn male human figures but distorted to some extent to emphasize the
feeling of dislocation of these human beings.
Wherever
Shruti has used human figures, they are depicted as thoughtful beings (Alter
Ego, As The World Spun) which represents the dizziness of those
caught in the dynamics of urbanisation.
In
another painting titled Yesterday Unravels, Today Engulfs, she creates
this movement in the form of a trapeze net or huge mosquito net tied within a
historical architecture that represents the old and sustainable urbanization
projects. In this net, human beings are seen as if they were washed away by a
gushing stream; a metaphor for the dynamics of history.
In I
SEE, I WAIT, I BELIEVE, she uses the human figure as an isolated being
within a complex landscape of grids, to depict the fact that one is alone in a
very special way in urban life.
Johny
M.L sums up: “Shruti interestingly evades
the idea of ‘femininity’ in her works. Though, she is not a feminist in strict
terms, through a very clever aesthetic ploy she sends counter gazes at a male
dominated society by depicting a lot of male nude bodies in her works. Though
she portrays predominantly male nudes and suggestive androgynous bodies
occasionally blurring the societal divides in a very clever way, she imparts
even a sort of strong musculature to them. This counter gaze comes from her
academic training as an artist. However, this gaze shows the contained but
carefully cultivated gender politics of the artist. Shruti is not into
sloganeering. But her works negotiate the urban spaces aesthetically and
counters the male ideology on a level playing field of aesthetic expressions.”
