What happens when you revisit a memory? Recollection of the past can evoke different reactions and expressions as one can see in Parallax of Visual Memories, an art show currently on at the two-year-old Reves Art Gallery led by Rajini Rekha.
The group show, curated by Nalini S Malviya, features established artists from different age groups like S.G.Vasudev, Gurudas Shenoy, Shanthamani.M, Yusuf Arakkal, Rekha Rao, Gopinath S, Milind Nayak, Murali Cheeroth, and Ravikumar Kashi. Each one of them respond to the theme uniquely in the show held at the well-located gallery. If Gopinath in his sculpture 'Twilight', depicting two babies and two flowers in a womb opened from the middle is a bit personal, Shanthamani on a unique cotton rag pulp paper expresses universal concerns.
Engaged with the issue of ecology for long, in her work, the eco-friendly recycled pulp paper, becomes a metaphor. The splintered forest, a wooden forest made entirely of charcoal bricks reminds us of the inevitable outcome and the past which once abounded with nature. Personal, political, sociological...the artists resort to various approaches to tackle the theme.
Artist Milind Nayak's lightly-hued canvases are full of joy as he recreates the memory of monsoons. Gurudas Shenoy, refers to urbanisation and its remnants in his work titled 'Urban impressions'. Just through structures, he is suggesting human existence without actually depicting a human figure. "When I selected the artists, I had the concept ready in my mind. I chose the artists accordingly," says the curator.
Parallax means the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions. Here the memory becomes an artefact of remembrance, which changes to become happy, sad, fragmented or faded. Ravikumar Kashi, in his water colours and colour pencil on archival paper, depicts fragments of the past weaving a narrative that once existed but like a jigsaw puzzle can be rearranged to find new meaning.
Murali Cheeroth employs different markers from history to create our urbanised spaces in 'Seeds on the left bank of the river'. On the day of the opening, the artist also did a performance based on the work. On November 22, Ananya Drishya in collaboration with Reves will present a panel discussion "Re-Representation of reality in contemporary art' with Murali Cheeroth, Ravikumar Kashi, Shanthamani M.
(The show is on at Reves Art Gallery, #32, Yedla's, 3rd Floor, 100 feet Marenahalli Road, 8th Block, Jayanagar, till December 5)
