Artists Harminder Judge and Mahirwan Mamtani have distinct practices. Judge, born in 1982 and raised in the UK, is a student at the Royal Academy in London.
Mamtani was born in Sindh in 1935, displaced to Delhi as a result of Partition, and has studied, lived, and worked in Munich since 1966. Separated by space and time, the two artists’ paths may have never crossed if not for a fortuitous intervention. Gallerists Amrita and Priya Jhaveri have made a carefully-considered yet decidedly-bold curatorial choice in their ongoing exhibition, At Home in the Universe at Jhaveri Contemporary. The show facilitates a conversation between Judge and Mamtani based on their shared interest in tantra, a set of ideas and practices that allow individuals to associate with the cosmos or something greater than themselves. This is not the first time the gallery has presented an unlikely pairing of artists. They have previously exhibited improbable duos such as Amrita Sher-Gil and Lionel Wendt, among others. While the artists and their practices may seem incompatible at first, viewing their works together “evokes imaginative and constructive dialogue around particular ideas,” suggests Priya. Tantra as a subject is not novel to the gallery either — the current show follows on from their 2016 exhibition, Thinking Tantra.
Precision and spontaneity
Stepping into the gallery, viewers encounter Mamtani’s geometric and symmetrical paintings juxtaposed against Judge’s fluid, oval-shaped works. In these, “sometimes psychedelic swirls appear; sometimes landscapes,” describes Rebecca Heald in an essay accompanying the exhibition. Both artists appear to share aesthetic affinities as far as their palettes and abstract imagery are concerned. It is however through their individual techniques, materials, and styles that Mamtani’s and Judge’s distinctive approaches towards addressing tantra become apparent.
Mamtani’s paintings from the 1980s, belong to his ‘Centrovision’ series that responds to tantric doctrines and depicts images representing mandalas . His forms that feature precise lines and well-defined spaces, emanate from the centre of his canvasses or wood cut-outs, towards peripheries and explore the subject of wholeness through microcosmic and macrocosmic relationships. Heald states, “these works speak of transformation and the potential to explore alternative dimensions, but they are also intensely personal.” Judge, alternatively, devices a controlled and ritualised process using construction material including plaster, polymer, and pigment through which he builds works that rely upon chance in their ultimate visual manifestations. His process alludes to Renaissance frescos and reverse glass-painting techniques. “Judge’s work is more open with swathes of unadorned space, it is less directive,” explains Heald.
Although the artists employ varying strategies, they both create works that enable an engagement with the universe. Judge acknowledges via an email interview, “Mamtani’s work may be more diagrammatic, more geometric, whereas mine are more organic and fluid, but they both speak of painting as portals rather than mirrors held up to the world.”
Being ‘at home’
Home in the literal sense of the artists’ ancestral places is a compelling question in this exhibition. This is Judge’s first exhibition in India, and as he explains, “this new body of work draws quite heavily not only on my interest in tantra, but on my many trips to India, mainly to Punjab where a lot of my family still are.” Mamtani, who experienced the feeling of being uprooted from his home has written, “Since 1948 after I left my native place Sindh on river Indus, I have lost the feeling for my home.” Considering their own diasporic identities, Mamtani and Judge use their works to ponder, “what we have in common with the universe, as well as who we are as individuals and how we find our place in it, our home,” Heald elucidates. Mamtani’s quest to understand his place in the world originates arguably from a physical displacement. Judge considers ideas surrounding life and death as suggested by titles of his works such as, ‘Always the ash, cradling the flesh,’ or ‘Mining the bones,’ which reflect upon a great-uncle’s funeral that he attended. His material process stems from his knowledge of building materials that he acquired while constructing a house at Peak District while trying to meet financial ends, Heald elaborates. His process thus reflects an involvement in building a home that he would never inhabit. Although the subject in both artists’ works in the context of this exhibition may be considered ostensibly in a geographically-specific manner, it is left to the viewer to also, as Judge suggests, “embrace something more universal.”
From the windows of the Colaba-based gallery, viewers may catch a glimpse of the dramatic shades of monsoon skies imposing upon the iconic Gateway of India and the sea at a distance. The timing of the exhibition is somewhat serendipitous — the capricious weather stages a perfect moment to reflect consciously in the manner that the artists’ works collaboratively beckon viewers to.
The meditative works inspire viewers to introspect upon their own place in the universe, accepting among other ideas, the variable and unpredictable consequences of what might be entirely premeditated, and what is left to chance.
At Home in the Universe is on at Jhaveri Contemporary, Colaba until Spetember 6.
