In a New Year gift to art enthusiasts, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale will allow ticketless entry to its venues on Mondays from January 1 onwards, till the art extravaganza closes on March 29.
A total of 15,000 people have so far visited the biennale at its major venues in Fort Kochi. “We wanted to make the Biennale – the first edition and the current one – belong to the people, because it happens with the support of people from all walks of life,” said Kochi Biennale Foundation president Bose Krishnamachari.
A curious movementVeteran artist and radiologist Sudhir Patwardhan’s three-panel image, ‘Building a Home: Exploring the World’, on display at Aspinwall House, is drawing the crowds. History and science have been the twin loves of Mr. Patwardhan. The work at the biennale captures two contrasting yet parallel activities that have characterised human life for ages. “On the one hand, man moves on to find new pastures. On the other, he strives to settle down in life. It’s curious,” said Mr. Patwardhan.
He said he had returned to books on history and space science since June as he set about shaping the work.
Cosmos seriesAmong others, he revisited the 13-part television series ‘Cosmos: A Personal Voyage’ and the film ‘Solaris’ in preparation for the work. The curator of the present biennale, artist Jitish Kallat, also played a vital role in kindling his spirit of exploration. “Kallat’s curatorial note, which reminded us that planet earth whorls through space at over a dizzying 100,000 km per hour, triggered images around the ideas of place and time,” said the Mumbai-based artist.
While the first and the third parts of the work are about original human migration and spacewalk respectively, the visual in the middle is an intelligent blend of the mythological Tower of Babel portrayed on the lines of 16th-century Renaissance artist Pieter Brueghel and a grand monumental building that Russian architect Vladimir Tatlin designed for erection in Petrograd after the 1917-Bolshevik Revolution but never really built.
“Both the towers are images of man’s will to power and his mastery over nature,” said Mr. Patwardhan, who took to full-time art in 2005.
