To dismantle everydayness
The Sublime, remains an ideal aspired for by the artist and seer alike; that which is in the “eternal now “beyond time and space and only experienced seldom expressed. The artist through his aesthetic grammar can only approximate the sublime. Vadehra Art gallery presents Ideas of the Sublime curated by Gayatri Sinha with a selection of artists from various generations and genres.
To create awe in beauty and to dismantle everydayness of phenomenon is often the telos of such art. Indian arts have used the rasa-bhava principle to reach the sublime, the essence of creation that is true to its time and space, to its social and religious milieu and to the divine can aspire to please the gods and its audience.
The word as image and text, and image alone are at the centre of shutter door works by Atul Dodiya. The arabesque calligraphy of the Kufic script in the Quran is juxtaposed with Robert Motherwell’s ‘Elegy to Spanish Republic’ seen in his work ‘The Sublime’. The dark monochromatic background is punctuated by gold leaf words from the ayaats of the revealed divine text, while the winged forms underneath lift it to another realm, light and free.
On the other hand the panoramic photographic structure of Rameshwar Broota’s Samode is monumental, with every intricacy and ornamentation of a Rajput palace vividly in focus. The ephemeral diffused female figure (in this case that of Vasundhara Tiwari) reading a book, sitting on the sofa, amongst this grandeur gives it Ozymandian overtones.
A lion adorned with a majestic mane roams in the crumbling mansion (of gods and kings) that are slowly reclaimed by nature as seen in Ranbir Kaleka’s elegiac work, but instead of prey he drinks from a milk bowl. The entire world is domesticated, restrained and restructured in the new world order that feeds on the decaying archaic structures.
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