"Surrealism taught the world to see art not merely visually and literally; but to appreciate it in a subconscious level as well. Today, surrealism is a familiar form of art that continues to grow globally. It’s easy for artists to show their creativity through Surrealism, because the style provides them more freedom to convey their feelings and thoughts through the canvas. Surreal art can be dreamy or gritty; or it can be optimistic or depressing."
Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Reflections in my studio
Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Ritual is an important part of my current working methodology.My studio is located in a quiet, isolated part of the house. I always begin at the same time everyday,early morning after everyone has left for work or for school .There is a flask of masala chai(Indian spiced tea) set on a desk next to an electric sharpener with a lot many colour pencils and some good paper at hand.I listen to the radio ,especially to the news.The BBC World News has features like "Witness" or interviews of successful people (how a man killed a crocodile which had swallowed his wife) or of people who might have suffered a loss(the interviews of parents of children shot down by terrorits in a school in Pakistan). Or things impacting our lives - how to curb the Ebola virus and now the zika virus carrying mosquito.Facebook also has news.They are intimate but not private moments from people's lives-their little victories and their pain. I browse through various magazines National Geographic or Fashion magazines and look at the photographs.I photograph some of these photographs or tear them from out to look at them more closely later.
These give me little germs of ideas.I write down the ideas but I do not give them concrete shape by drawing them yet.I hold the ideas and let them grow and grow and they grow bigger inside my head. I think how much of what is reported is factual and how much is fictional. Sometimes facts are much stranger than fiction.For instance I read an article today about three people who accidentally died with gunshot wounds in USA this week alone.One of them was a three year old baby playing with his mother's purse while she attended to a phonecall. He found the gun in the purse and pulled the trigger, thereby shooting himself .There was an interview I heard a story about a seven year old girl in Africa who was repeatedly raped by a relative in her own home for two years. she was too scared to reach out to anyone in her family. She would wear several layers of clothing and hide under the bed hoping that the man would go away. What are the odds incidents like these might happen, yet they do.These kind of stories creep into my work.
On other days I dip into my memories.Sometimes I transpose real events as is without alterations and sometimes I add imagined elements to create half truths. Like I remembered my nursery teacher used to threaten children about tying them up the fan if they misbeahaved or the time when I nearly poked my finger into a pedestal fan as a child.These sort of memories/moments find their way into my work.
How much of memory is reliable anyway? As screenplay writer John Singleton said: "We invent dialogues for ourselves, rearrange chronology, try metaphor and assonance and rhythms to heighten emotion and dramatize, telescope events, eliminate extraneous detail, focus on key moments, images, ad infinitum". Visual narratives are not very different from written fiction.In both of them a part of the experiences of the maker comes through to the viewer/reader.To quote Dennis Wyatt Harding: "No one now can doubt that an author's work may reveal features of his personality and outlook that he had no intention of expressing... of which he may even be in the strict sense unconscious"
My drawings reveal my inner world and the external world through the lens dreamtime.They are my interpretation of events that have occured and are not necessarily a factual account of them.
John Singleton, 'The Short Story' in The Creative Writing Handbook, ed. John Singleton and Mary Luckhurst (London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1996), p. 100.
Denys Wyatt Harding, Experience Into Words, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974)
Tuesday, 26 January 2016
Contemporary Storytelling
Narrative remained an option for artists, especially in contemporary art after 1980, when personal, political, and social issues were increasingly approached through storytelling, often in documentary or confessional formats.Contemporary narratives provide the viewer with more questions than answers.
Visual artists have “told” stories in a -variety of ways. Those who work in a more traditional narrative mode sometimes create compositions centered on a familiar story that is a part of a particular community’s ingrained collective consciousness. These works of art necessarily depend on the viewer’s knowledge—from myth, religion, history, or literature—of the oral tradition or text that the image references.
Artists employ alternative visual methods to capture, in a single composition, a complete narrative with multiple events, as seen in Ellen Lanyon’s lithograph Six Episodes/Monarch (1979). In six squared compartments, the artist traces the life of a caterpillar as it evolves into a butterfly, with the fantastic touch of a human hand gradually drawing closer to it.
Another format to visualize a series of actions in a single story is a sequence of separate panels, as represented by the great fresco cycles of the Renaissance. In Giotto in Chicago (1981), Roger Brown updates this mode of storytelling by creating two registers of joined panels in a single-sheet lithograph that pays homage to the celebrated 14th century Florentine fresco painter Giotto di Bondone. The subject matter, however, is modern as it traces the trials and tribulations of the young artist making his way through the art world.
StoryBook also looks at contemporary innovations in storytelling. Although an artist might have a readymade narrative, he might take liberties in visualizing the story.It does not offer a literal depiction of a textual passage. Instead, it stands as a poetic suggestion of an important moment that also references a previous episode in the story, thereby creating a fragmented narrative in a single image.
Artists have also adopted more unorthodox means to create images whose meanings do not depend on pre-existing narratives directly quoted or alluded to. Storylines may be implied or ambiguous, prompting viewers to create or complete the story in personal terms. For example, what exactly are the circumstances surrounding Richard Bosman’s falling man in his woodcut from 1984? What led to this scene? What will the aftermath be? The viewer must decide the story. A similar situation confronts the viewer in Robert Barnes’s painting Ragno’s Place (1981). What is the man fleeing from? Has he caused or is he the victim of all the wreckage around him? In another instance, the viewer is put on call to interpret Todd Hido’s color photograph Untitled #2154 (1998). Is there a story here? Lights come from windows on the first and second floors of a suburban house at twilight. Or is it dawn? If there is human activity, what is it? The shadow of a tree branch falling across the house suggests possible danger. Whatever the story is, it must be imagined by the viewer. And, the story will change from one person to the next.
These works of art, and others included in the exhibition, illustrate the great range of storytelling in contemporary art. As a whole, StoryBook suggests that the ancient art of telling stories in images remains a vital tradition.
http://www.mmoca.org/exhibitions-collection/exhibits/storybook-narrative-contemporary-art
Monday, 25 January 2016
Sunday, 24 January 2016
A Method to the Madness
Invisible moments become visible.California based artist Rebecca Szeto is interested in the poetic intersection of the material and the immaterial -‐ a transformative, and often humorous synthesis of confounded expectations. The process develops as an exploration of the qualities inherent in the materials and evolves into a deeper look at their implications. What results are often unexpected overlappings in drawing, painting, installation and/or interactive participation. With much of Rebecca's work the viewer initally recognizes one thing, but looking closer, realizes something is curiously awry. The works are markedly concise and quietly playful, steeped in wordplay, and often consisting of a single repetitive object or action combined with elements of chance.
This artist's work is similar to mine because it is playful, repetition of small works to create installations, driven by chance, is an overlap of various mediums, is unexpected open ended and absurd
This artist's work is similar to mine because it is playful, repetition of small works to create installations, driven by chance, is an overlap of various mediums, is unexpected open ended and absurd
These fragmentary forms created by Rebecca are largely dictated by chance and automatic sewing of misshapen scrap edges, one to another. The language of these works deal with impossible objects, fascinating in their refusal to conform through shape or words, as per philosopher Jacques Derrida’s “inadequate yet necessary”; they remain stolidly indefinable. There is a (dis)comfort that results from the inability to identify them within any cultural construct, and at the same time, displays a natural ease and freedom from narrative that speaks literal and metaphoric volumes to the immaterial. They offer an understanding of wholeness through alternative channels of recognition.
Rebecca's paintbrush portraits also interested me.She transformed paintbrushes to demonstrate her love for art history and the human form.The slow and repetitive pace of whittling allowed her time to reflect more directly on the idiosyncrasies of each individual brush. The action of whittling served as a metaphor for reducing something to its core value or essence.
Rebecca's paintbrush portraits also interested me.She transformed paintbrushes to demonstrate her love for art history and the human form.The slow and repetitive pace of whittling allowed her time to reflect more directly on the idiosyncrasies of each individual brush. The action of whittling served as a metaphor for reducing something to its core value or essence.
Bridge of Spies-Bridging the Past and the Present
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p038xgxf
In this BBC interview of Steven Speilberg about his new film offering "Bridge of Spies" he talks about how little autobiographical details might creep into his stories or how his work has become more introspective.Also the fact that how a period historical film about the Cold War decades ago resonates with contemporary world issues here and now interested me.
In this BBC interview of Steven Speilberg about his new film offering "Bridge of Spies" he talks about how little autobiographical details might creep into his stories or how his work has become more introspective.Also the fact that how a period historical film about the Cold War decades ago resonates with contemporary world issues here and now interested me.
Wednesday, 20 January 2016
Waking Life
It ihard to say how much of Richard Linklater's "Waking Life" (2001) is a dream. I think all of it is. His hero keeps dreaming that he has awakened. He climbs out of bed, splashes water on his face, walks outside and finds himself dreaming again. But the film isn't one of those surrealist fantasies with pinwheels coming out of the hero's eyes or people being sucked down into the vortex. It's mostly conversational, and the conversation is all intriguing.The dreamer must be intelligent.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps he's channeling it from outside. A woman in a coffee shop tells him her idea for a soap opera plot, and he asks her how it feels to be a character in his dream. She doesn't answer, because how can she, since she's only a character in his dream? On the other hand, where did she come up with that plot? He tells her he could never have invented it himself. It's like it came to him in a ... no, that doesn't work. It's like it came in from outside the dream.
And what is dreaming, anyway? A woman in the film speculates that when we dream, we are experiencing ourselves apart from our physical bodies. After we die, she says, doesn't it make sense that we would keep on dreaming, but that we'd never stop dreaming because now we were apart from our bodies? No, it doesn't make sense, I think, because our dreams take place within our physical brains. Maybe not. Maybe we only think they do.
"Waking Life" is philosophical and playful film about an unnamed young man living an ethereal existence that lacks transitions between everyday events and that eventually progresses toward an existential crisis. For most of the film he observes quietly but later participates actively in philosophical discussions involving other characters—ranging from quirky scholars and artists to everyday restaurant-goers and friends—about such issues as metaphysics, free will, social philosophy and the meaning of life. Other scenes do not even include the protagonist's presence, but rather, focus on a random isolated person, group of people, or couple engaging in such topics from a disembodied perspective. Along the way, the film touches also upon existentialism, situationist politics, post humanity, the film theory of Andre Bazen, and lucid dreaming and makes references to various celebrated intellectual and literary figures by name.
Gradually, the protagonist begins to realize that he is living out a perpetual dream, broken up only by occasional false awakenings So far he is mostly a passive onlooker, though this changes during a chat with a passing woman who suddenly approaches him. After she greets him and shares her creative ideas with him, he reminds himself that she is a figment of his own dreaming imagination. Afterwards, he starts to converse more openly with other dream characters, but he begins to despair about being trapped in a dream.
Tuesday, 19 January 2016
Single stories become sterotypes
https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en
I want to create many overlapping stories drawn from the depths of my subconscious mind, not a single point story but stories with many angles and a great many dimensions.
I want to create many overlapping stories drawn from the depths of my subconscious mind, not a single point story but stories with many angles and a great many dimensions.
Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from “The Danger of a Single Story”
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from “The Danger of a Single Story”
The Internal Computer
Read this in the book "BLINK" by Malcom Gladwell-:
"The part of our brain that leaps to conclusions is called the adaptive unconscious and the study of this kind of decision making is one of the most important new fields in psychology.The adaptive unconscious is not to be confused with the unconscious described by Sigmond Freud which was a dark murky place filled with desires and memories and fantasies that were too disturbing for us to think about consciously.This new notion of the adaptive unconscious is though of instead as a kind of giant computer that quickly and quietly processes a lot of data we need in order to keep functioning as human beings.When you walk out into the street and suddenly realize that a truck is bearing down on you do you have time to think through options?Of course not.The only way that human beings could have ever survived as a species for as long as we have is that we have developed another kind of decision making apparatus that is capable of very quick judgements based on very little information.As the psychologist Timothy D Wilson writes in his book "Strangers to Ourselves" "The mind operates most efficiently by relegating a good deal of high level sophisticated thinking to the unconscious just as a modern jetliner is able to fly on automatic pilot with little or no input from the human "conscious" pilot.The adaptive unconscious does an excellent job of sizing up the world warning people of dangers setting goals and initiating action in a sophisticated and efficient manner."
I think we are innately suspicious of rapid cognition.We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to time and effort that went into making it. What do we tell our children? Haste makes a waste,Look before you leap Stop and think. Don't judge a book by its cover.We believe that we are better off gathering as much information as possible and spending as much time as possible on deliberation.e really only trust conscious decision making .But there are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgements and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world.Decisions make very quickly can be every bit as good decisions as decisions make deliberately and cautiously."
A rapid decision making about my drawings is a good method to make interesting work I think.
"The part of our brain that leaps to conclusions is called the adaptive unconscious and the study of this kind of decision making is one of the most important new fields in psychology.The adaptive unconscious is not to be confused with the unconscious described by Sigmond Freud which was a dark murky place filled with desires and memories and fantasies that were too disturbing for us to think about consciously.This new notion of the adaptive unconscious is though of instead as a kind of giant computer that quickly and quietly processes a lot of data we need in order to keep functioning as human beings.When you walk out into the street and suddenly realize that a truck is bearing down on you do you have time to think through options?Of course not.The only way that human beings could have ever survived as a species for as long as we have is that we have developed another kind of decision making apparatus that is capable of very quick judgements based on very little information.As the psychologist Timothy D Wilson writes in his book "Strangers to Ourselves" "The mind operates most efficiently by relegating a good deal of high level sophisticated thinking to the unconscious just as a modern jetliner is able to fly on automatic pilot with little or no input from the human "conscious" pilot.The adaptive unconscious does an excellent job of sizing up the world warning people of dangers setting goals and initiating action in a sophisticated and efficient manner."
I think we are innately suspicious of rapid cognition.We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to time and effort that went into making it. What do we tell our children? Haste makes a waste,Look before you leap Stop and think. Don't judge a book by its cover.We believe that we are better off gathering as much information as possible and spending as much time as possible on deliberation.e really only trust conscious decision making .But there are moments, particularly in times of stress, when haste does not make waste, when our snap judgements and first impressions can offer a much better means of making sense of the world.Decisions make very quickly can be every bit as good decisions as decisions make deliberately and cautiously."
A rapid decision making about my drawings is a good method to make interesting work I think.
Sunday, 17 January 2016
A Drawing A Day
Started drawing in the third week of December.I have made 12 drawings so far.Wish to make a drawing a day to accelerate my making process.It is a challenge I am taking up so I have a large collection in a few months.I experimented with how I might install the drawings.
Thursday, 21 January, 2016
Monday 28 February 2016
We had a group crit today and the comments from the peer group who responded as viewers are summarized below
Scale is important,how big are the works and how much space will they jointly cover?
Cute, then surreal and funny, I laughed out loud. There’s feminist line.
Presentation important so you can see the details. Maybe use something to magnify.
Intriguing figures, delicate, dreamlike, random. Wondering how to place the figures. What’s the story? Are there intentional stories?
Standing on wood they might lose their delicacy.
Eclectic, joyful and macabre. Pythonesque, Terry Gilliam animations. Surrealism.
Different dimensions. The figures don’t seem to feel any pain. The boy cutting of his arm. Crazy psychotic creepy world.
Humour and terror. Cultural references play a big role.
Evocative, provocative, there doesn't need to be a story
The figures have agency and dynamism, I wonder what they might do next?
For example, what’s coming up today for me.
I can’t see connection with Indian culture.
I wanted to know who your artistic influences are?
Have you looked at Paula Rego, Mattise cut outs, Chris Natrop paper
installations?
Have you thought about producing a book?
Tuesday, 29 Februay 2016
Who is there?
Tea Time
snake garland
The chair person
The Red Queen
seen not heard
Stitching
Bat Girl
washing intestines
beneath the roses
smell the roses
Underwater but breathing fine
Tuesday, 19 January, 2016
His Kalashnikov
Wednesday, 20 January 2016
the cut up girl
Thursday, 21 January, 2016
Speaking flowers
Friday, 22 January, 2016
Speaking frogs
Saturday, 23 January, 2016
Undercover
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Listening
Monday, 25 January, 2016
drone
Tuesday 26 January 2016
overflow
Wednesday 27 January 2016
Thursday 28 January 2016
eating dog
Friday, January 29, 2016
Praying Mantis
Saturday, 30 January, 2016
Pop Artist
Sunday 31 January 2016
Monday 1 February 2016
Tuesday, 2 February 2016
Wednesday, 3rd February 2016
Thursday 4th February 2016
Friday, 5 February 2016
Saturday 6 February 2016
I have not been as regular as I wanted to because I participated in a Dubai based gallery(Tashkeel)'s annual open call.The theme this year was "Connectivity" and dealt with how technology is impacting our lives. I created a papercut diorama in a makeshift lightbox.It was an experimental piece.Very intricate and detailed. It was an extension of these papercuts I have been currently making .I named the piece "We are all made of stars".Do not know if it will get selected but I felt I had taken a little step forward.
Saturday 13 February 2016
This was made on Making Day .A part of the cohort had logged in together in a hangout and we simultaneously made work in our respective studios.We shared our work at the end of the day and provided feedback to each other.The adjectives ascribed to my work by the peer group were: playful, illustrative, inquisitive, watermelon, courgette, desperation, fearful, unseen, invisible, incongruous, hidden, animal,cryptic, political, changing .
Thursday, 18 February, 2016
brainwash
Friday, 19 February, 2016
Saturday, 20 February 2016
Monday, February 22, 2016
Wednesday, 24 February, 2016
a nosediving WW II plane held on a loopy string by a boy.......
Thursday, 25 February, 2016
is that a rude gesture? what is in the water pistol?water or acid?
Friday 26 February 2016
who cut the phone line?
Sunday, 27 February 2016
We had a group crit today and the comments from the peer group who responded as viewers are summarized below
Scale is important,how big are the works and how much space will they jointly cover?
Cute, then surreal and funny, I laughed out loud. There’s feminist line.
Presentation important so you can see the details. Maybe use something to magnify.
Intriguing figures, delicate, dreamlike, random. Wondering how to place the figures. What’s the story? Are there intentional stories?
Standing on wood they might lose their delicacy.
Eclectic, joyful and macabre. Pythonesque, Terry Gilliam animations. Surrealism.
Different dimensions. The figures don’t seem to feel any pain. The boy cutting of his arm. Crazy psychotic creepy world.
Humour and terror. Cultural references play a big role.
Evocative, provocative, there doesn't need to be a story
The figures have agency and dynamism, I wonder what they might do next?
For example, what’s coming up today for me.
I can’t see connection with Indian culture.
I wanted to know who your artistic influences are?
Have you looked at Paula Rego, Mattise cut outs, Chris Natrop paper
installations?
Tuesday, 29 Februay 2016
Wednesday 1 March 2016
Thursday 2 March 2016
In other news my work was chosen for Tashkeel Gallery's annual open call "Connectivity" .I had been very busy through the week running around to get a wooden box constructed and the day was spent in giving finishing touches to the piece ,fitting LED lights to the box and shipping it to Dubai in time for the show.
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Since I completed 60 cutouts I have decided to pause and look at how to exhibit the works.I am pasting the cutouts on cardboard to make them firm and making stands to make them stand up.I experimented today with how I want the work to look in the gallery by arranging a few in a row.
Monday, April 18, 2016
I built stands for my characters and make them stand in a row to see how they would look.I like the fact that they are of varied sizes shapes genders which is making them look bizarre and dramatic.I plan to arrange them in a long row at eye level so that the viewer can venture close to them, observe the little nuances.I am also toying with the idea of them all together on a raised surface like a table or a plinth but the ones at the back cannot be seen clearly though the effect would be more spectacular.
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