n e w . c l u s t e r

'new cluster' watercolor on arches paper
28.feb.2007 / size: 30" x 23"

g a s . c o n t a i n e r s

'gas containers' watercolor on arches paper
27.feb.2007 / size: 30" x 23"

h a n g i n g T V

waiting. hanging tv. chairs. movies. models. flash. pop. trash. glitter. splash. tv hanging. stars. super and lesser ones. dancing around the remaining trees. running in slow motion and collide in the middle. again and again. boredom. tv hanging. chairs. heads up. waiting. hanging tv. advertisements. all faces up. all eyes move the same way like that of a tennis watching crowd. same expressions. tv hanging. all the chairs are taken.

s l e e p i n g . b a g

this new work i did yesterday is the first in the larger watercolor series(18" x 32"). individual images.

"...Artists often put their work before other things, it takes a lot of ruthlessness to make them, to go from non-existence to existence, is a very disruptive activity; it is a natural entity also, in the sense, the artwork sometimes comes out of nothing, and things sometimes appear to you in a way, it is sometimes a passive process but energetic nonetheless..." -kiki smith.

s t u d d e d

studded helmet of the painting 'man with golden helmet' by rembrandt. star studded night sky. a couch with silver studs. leather and metal studs go together. studded earrings and nose studs are common now all over the world. but i do not completely understand the mind set to pierce 'other' delicate body parts and install steel studs; thinking that it is cool. this is a trend among many youths in the states and europe for a while now.

m u n d a n e

mundane is mysterious sometimes. why is it there? who brought it there? what's the use of it? several things are useless and outdated but they are still preserved. absurdity of some stuff laying around really hits us sometimes. seemingly unrelated things stay together as a cluster. organic stuff has a weather beaten way of blending with the natural permise easily. we posses, store and carry around irrelevant things that are a real burden for us. we had desired them at some point and later realized they were trash! still we 're attached and carry them around like a crazy person. some are useful of course. but most of them are not.

t a n k e r

oil wells. oil islands. oil merchants. oil bases. oil rigs. oil tankers. oil royalties. oil tzars. oil countries. oil companies. oil jobs. oil pumps. oil money. oil banks. oil cities. oil wars. oil fires. oil tribes. oil lords. oil killings. oil religions. oil politics. oil diplomacy. oil media. oil economy. oil analysts. oil stocks. oil machines. oil price. oil thirst. oil future?

on the other hand...

it seems like everything is placed on a delicate balance
and we are rocking the boat left and right in ignorance.
even when the symptoms of abuse have started showing up everywhere,
we still are hurrying on our same ways with a smirk on our face
as if we are adamant about not learning anything from history.
this is going to come back and bite our back really bad.
on the other hand,
if everything happens for a reason
and if everything happens for good,
and everything is supposed to be how it is,
who knows, life sure is a real mystery.

c l u s t e r

stuff. things. objects. assets. property. articles. belongings. materials. possessions. different names. same difference.

g e r h a r d r i c h t e r

Gilbert & George 1975
oil on canvas
80.4 (h) x 100.4 (w) cm

german artist gerhard richter has done it all !

"gerhard richter's work is full of tension between depicted reality and the actuality of painting: process and material. he is known for his photo-paintings, particularly his landscapes, and his involved abstract paintings. despite the scope of his body of work, which is commonly misunderstood as polar, Richter's paintings consistently support a unified theme that is twofold:
1. Images (and ideas and ideals) are static, superficial, and unachievable and are to be doubted; and,
2. Reality is a process of imagination and material creation and revision. Richter’s subject is the range of relationships between illusion and this reality, his painting. the art that Richter painted is not 'art' as such. It is the result of art from the artist's mind. The multiple images that goes through the artist's mind are infinite, but he had to arrive to a conclusion in which sometimes is very difficult to do."


http://www.gerhard-richter.com/home/index.php

“One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone. For basically painting is idiocy.” (From Richter, 'Notes 1973', in The Daily Practice of Painting, p.78.)

richter and contextualization

Funeral Beerdigung
couple of weeks ago, i saw "October 18, 1977 - cycle ", gerhard richter's set of 15 paintings at MOMA, New York (their permanent collection) along with my friend.

(quotes are from different web sites)
"black and white paintings are done by meticulously copying and blurring the photographs of dead Baader Meinhof group. this is all about context. it is a collection derived from imagery that would have been instantly recognizable to a German who viewed it in 1980s. in the late 80s the Red Army Faction was at its deadliest. The Baader Meinhof group abducted and bombed and murdered in public. And they are dead. "I was impressed by their energy, their uncompromising determination and their absolute bravery; but I could not find it in my heart to condemn the State for its harsh response." Richter has also described them as "people who died so young and so crazy, for nothing."
experiencing art benefits from contextualization. art by acknowledged masters like Goya, Monet, Picasso, and Rembrandt, for example. can't one enjoy their works for the pure emotions they stir, devoid of context? but our learning and appreciation is deepened by understanding the context in which the work arose. Richter's 'cycle' is cold, dreamy, and fundamentally, brilliantly, sad. His technique of blurring the details of the two-dimensional worlds of found photographs, renders life somehow inert. it certainly puts a distance between the viewer and the viewed; great tension is generated as we are pushed away from subjects that would normally draw us in. unlike old masters, the only way to discern more detail from Richter's work is for us to move further away. i think that was Richter's plan."

he has done landscapes in colour also; leaving one to wonder if they were some kind of joke.
Richter: "Of course my landscapes are not only beautiful or nostalgic, with a Romantic or classical suggestion of lost Paradises, but above all 'untruthful'... and by 'untruthful' I mean the glorifying way we look at Nature - Nature, which in all its forms is always against us, because it knows no meaning, no pity, no sympathy, because it knows nothing and is absolutely mindless: the total antithesis of ourselves, absolutely inhuman. Every beauty that we see in landscape is our projection; and we can switch it off at a moment's notice, to reveal only the appalling horror and ugliness". It appears that the ambivalence of the grey death paintings lurk behind his clear colour landscapes. The landscapes are beautiful but there is a desertedness, an anxious forbidding remoteness to them. Or do they just look that way because we have just walked through his paintings of murders, war, and atrocities?

thought provoking, of course; like the german film maker Herzog's view on nature; (in the documentary Grizzly Man (2005) where a nature lover lives among grizzly bears of alaska, and at last being killed by them). at one point Herzog explains over a close up shot of a grizzly's eyes that he sees nothing but "the overwhelming indifference of nature..."

my random thoughts:
-we humans are also a part of nature, not separate. nature is neutral. neither inhuman or human. planet is not homocentric.
-as he says, "every beauty that we see in landscape is our projection", so is ugliness. manifestation is the result of paying constant attention to what we want to see. two opposing perspectives.
-has nature(minus humans)began working against us? we humans are slowly tripping the balance at least for the last 100 years. is it what richter's ambivalence about?
-i think that is what his work's about, as a whole; considering his huge body of work of more than 30some years.

object and subject

anything we see has a meaning. sociopolitical, psychological, aesthetic and such. it has associations. sometimes representations. it exists as an ontological reality independent of our sensory perception. it is there as it is. it has an essence. it also has a subjective reality which we project on to it. our impression of it is based on our perception. which is real? both are. both exist. we observe it. we have an opinion about it. but it is not a permanent opinion. we perceive it in a particular time and space. time is embedded in it. it tells a story on one level. then after the story, it becomes silent. still. then it changes in to something else. a new story begins. some stories are short and subtle. minimal and sublime. swift and abstract. some are gross and bold. some do not sound like stories at all. but the subject continues to exist.

winter rain

window of rain and sleet
street lights reflect deep tonight
watercolor spreads

square and bauhaus school

i lived in the northwestern city of chandigarh, india during 1987-88 period. when swiss architect Le Corbusier planned chandigarh (between 1950 and 1965), it became the 1st planned modern city of India. his designs of the buildings and such, transcended Chandigarh into a timeless, pan-cultural statement of the power of architecture. one of his influences was bauhaus school, which set its main trends in contemporary German architecture in the first thirty years of the 20th century. their basic form of design was the 'square' (I am simplifying). it is a minimal form. square is open into all directions. limitless. rectangles or any other basic forms do not have as much possibilities as a square. it is the form of convenience too. bauhaus believed in pragmatic and humanistic approach to design.

by 1932, the Nazis had won a majority in Dessau, Germany and cut off all financial support to the bauhaus. the school was forced to move to Berlin, where it survived without any public funding for a brief time. in 1933, the Berlin police, acting on the orders of the new Nazi government finally closed it.

process of elimination

both conscious effort and serendipitous moments collude to evoke compositions. during the process a painting begins to communicate back. the discourse between the observer and the process of creation happens continuously. writers talk about characters visiting them during late night hours to discuss their future into the story! similarly painting evolves, sometimes from so called mistakes and corrections to a unique state when the process of elimination happens. negation and creation. the basic frame work will be there. this dialogue along with associated memories is like a personal notation which gets embedded in the work. in retrospect, it works as a documentation of 'time'.

idea to image

how to transport an idea into image? the content is already the part of one's own self. an external stimulus becomes just a catalyst to trigger the process. when one gets the clarity of vision, it is better to hold on to it for a while, cherish it and streamline it into an image. making it to a tangible form. like listening to one's own thoughts. one has to find the focal point. following the process objectively is almost impossible. but once the relevant content gets revealed, rest will fall in place easily. medium is not a big issue in art now. ultimately what matters is the way the form is presented to communicate the idea.

nostalgia and reality

childhood memories and one's nostalgia of the past have their placement. nostalgia has a 'romantic' ring to it. even the sound of the word 'nostalgia' is poetic and melancholic. in a deeper level it is metaphysical. there is also a strong urge to 'dream away' from the present reality. everyone is a traveler really. physically or metaphysically. migration is a natural process in all species. ultimately nostalgia exists in memories. displacement and longing accent its intensity and beauty. nostalgia adds magical colors to the outer layers. it is exotic sometimes. unreal too. it is a process of repeated recall of memories being tainted by added layers of imagination over what happened in reality. nostalgia is about the past. But one has to be in the present moment to create something new. muses appear 'here and now'. art is all about fresh and unique moments. so the reality of the now takes over eventually. an image maker can never deny the immediate present; the air one breaths on a daily basis.

clarity and balance

ideas are always in the air. all kinds of them. all point to different directions. having clarity of thought and clarity of ideas depend on the choices of course. relevance of an idea in a particular time and space depends on one's value system. if one does not have a criterion to measure anything and if one uses all kinds of frames of references mixed up in a given situation; that is a recipe for utter confusion, loss of direction and focus. artists are considered to be nonconfirmists. but does that mean anything in this context?

minmal

going to the essence of things is a process of being sensitive to the subtle. art is not about the gross for sure. outwardly it may not have the illustrative and narrative form so to speak. but when it possesses the power to communicate it makes us silent. art is all about this communication. there should be something novel to say. it should be touching some invisible pressure points, with the power of a whisper at a relevant time.

cerebration

is our perception of this reality limited to our five senses? image maker always goes through the process of questioning this reality as s/he perceives it. eventually new visual language is evolved during and after many hours of art making. language of visual art transcends geographic, linguistic and cultural boundaries. certain deeper experiences, points of revelations and momentary abstractions, are neglected during the fast lane of life, usually come back in a subtle nature, disturb us with their charm. certain alchemy happens in the deepest chambers, later to be expressed in some form of value. as observations mature during the years one finds out that the questions are addressed through the celebration of art making process, rather than 'cerebration' of it. it is important for an image maker to keep creating continuously because the real truths are revealed  solely by working relentlessly.

chairmen

runway-chairs

carpet-chairs

bed and trunk

when words take over the reality in front, the perception is incomplete and disposed to a great extend. we name things in certain way for the convenience of daily transaction. every image maker is trying to get deeper into the essence of the reality. s/he is trying to see things by looking and then again looking as if s/he is seeing it for the first time in his/er life. the documentation of this mystery is always interesting.

waiting

how to deal with waiting is always an interesting question. observing the life around is the first thing we all do when we travel for instance. watching people. their body language. the things they do. this is endlessly intriguing in my case. most of the time waiting comes unexpected. it is very easy to be impatient and suffer. but it can be very contemplative if we accept the reality of the situation. two different perspectives.

sitting devices

the sitting devices are pretty interesting. they have a sensual quality. the soft touch of the fabric and the rest. the form itself has come a long way from the first stone our primitive ancestors sat on to the present day 'lazy-boy' with a cup holder at the side to hold your drink and a place to keep the remote for TV and many different adjustments for reclining and such. it may have an uncomfortable meaning in a different context. chair of authority, chair of interrogation and execution and such. the moment you see them, all kinds of memories and subtle emotions arise in the subconscious. the laid back nature of a cozy chair brings back the remembrance of some easy times. generally they evoke a sense of relief as they are associated with rest and relaxation.

satin

lazyboy-1

Checker Sofa

analysis paralysis

i was in india during the winter of 2006, staying in kochi, kerala. did water colors on a daily basis. all the works included in this blog (so far) are from these series. they are of mundane things. bags, chairs and all kinds of ordinary stuff. many artists have done this before. van gogh's shoes comes to mind. it is still interesting to document them. human presence in these daily objects is subtle but evident. when we look at them again and pay more attention to them, depict them without much exaggeration and judgement, their meaning expands into something more. some mystery is there. it may be because of the memories we associate with them and about the history behind them. anything and everything about them. we feel intimate to things, people and daily life itself. the alienation we bring into the moments creates a mild anxiety so to speak. art on the other hand is a reconnecting process. the constant cerebral and analytical approach drains the color out of daily life. we have to have a balance. there is this 'analysis paralysis' disease which is one of the reasons for the blockage of our free expression.

communication

Airport terminal. sounds.
shops. talk. people. words.
announcements. noise.
cell phones. talk.
everyone is hearing,
but are they listening?
everyone is looking at something.
but are they seeing?
everyone is glued to some form of screens.
laptops. words. wi- fi. net. talk.
tvs. computers. ipods. games. noise.
pixelled vision.
If communication is this good,
how come are there
these many conflicts around?

Aselm Kiefer

I was with an artist friend of mine visiting from India last week at the Modern art museum in Fort Worth Texas. We stood in front of a painting in awe, called 'Golden Calf' by the German artist Anselm Kiefer. On Oct 4th 2006 was when I had visited 'modern' the last time, for the show called "Heaven & Earth" of Kiefer. There were more than 30 works in that show, including many large paintings & installations. First thing that hits us is the stark and raw nature of the surface of the works. They are huge frames (some 're more than 30 feet ) with heavy texture. I talked to the curator and he said it took one month to install the whole show. Earlier works leave a bad taste of war and death in our mouth. Nazi killings during the 2nd war is his basic premise. But he moves to old testament, German nomadic myths, conceptual presentations of existential anguish in general and beyond. The discourse goes on into deeper layers of the starry nights and the universe. Kiefer uses tar for black and for other forms & colors; oils, acrylic, gold leaf, led etc. Latest works are constellations with black backdrop. Names of each nebula and cluster of stars are marked in detail on paper and glued to the surface. He recreates the universe. The epic air the works emulate is definitely beyond words. It demands a trained eye to fully enter into his world, as he is not one of those 'pretty picture makers'. His compositions follow the basic rule of objective approach of a single perspective (like in a photo) then he builds upon it by applying heavy texture with polymer and anything natural or synthetic to achieve a subjective and abstract quality to the surface. This adds the works an interesting vibrancy and mystery to them. Still the basic image is retained. We will look at them for a long time. Installation of large ledger-like books with hinges on their spine is made with led sheets as pages. Led is a harmful metal which has the history of anti-human usage in war a lot. Here medium itself becomes the content. There is no doubt that Kiefer is a monumental image maker and a living legend. He now lives in France.

“I’m interested in reconstructing symbols. It’s about connecting with an older knowledge and trying to discover continuities in why we search for heaven.” Anselm Kiefer


detail of the texture

nostalgia of the uprooted

all through human history, people have moved from rural to urban areas searching for better living conditions, employment and such. one can see endless cluster of slums with bare minimum living conditions near to luxurious high rises in the city of Mumbai, India for example. most of them do not go back to their origin. low income areas are common in the southern parts of any city in the world (this is just a generalized observation of mine -I do not know why south- may be the north of the river banks are settled by people earlier. then they become wealthy and later the south was inhabited by latecomers) migration is a natural process. birds and animals do it. human history is filled with exoduses. refugees, pilgrims, immigrants, sailors, soldiers, tramps, business wo/men, gypsies, tourists, students and the list goes on. but uprooting makes a person weak until the new roots become strong and healthy again. some people can not do this effectively. many live in the nostalgic past and do not blend completely with the immediate present. but their kids do not have this nostalgia. they grow up in the present with their friends. the unrealistic nostalgia makes them without the reality orientation to the now. they do not feel the pulse back at their home-town as they do not live there anymore. so internally they are disconnected with both the worlds. this unreal state of disowning a place at a particular time in history, makes them vulnerable to all kinds of brainwashing tools of the market culture. at the same time they are hard workers with this instability inside. it is a strange mix.

choices

eight billion people,
eight billion truths
one life, too many choices
one planet, too many paths
when the journey transcends the traveller
the beginner is forgotten forever.
no baggage to claim at the terminal,
intense stillness of the moment remains.

oil-drums

to be relevant...

everyone wants to be relevant ultimately. nobody wants to be rejected. then the question of how to be relevant comes. to be excellent in what one does is the simple answer. put one hundred per cent into the present moment. but how much one can do it? that depends on the emotional domain one is in on a daily basis. everyone has a basic nature. one can not go beyond that. then there is these acquired habit patterns along the way. style of dealing with stress, solving problems, pushing the limits, taking risks and such...

there is acceptance among the inner group (of close buddies) which usually is a slow and steady build up and then there is the recognition by the society (media, fame and such). again the ultimate goal is to be relevant. here the driving force depends also on one's conviction about the work one does; how strong is the belief in it. how serious one is about pursuing something. when totally involved in image making, one eventually forgets this ultimate goal of trying 'to be relevant'. end result is not in the immediate picture. any work can be like this. when one becomes masterful, eventually the action becomes effortless and the process itself brings relevance to the moment.

memory and movements

we remember people's faces by their expressions. their smiles, laughter, subtle movements and the body language in general. hand gestures and the way one walks and such. we can memorize a moving form better than a still one. a moving form has more functional meaning than a still object. it is obviously more lively which is what we are attracted to i guess. but mobility does not necessarily mean that the form should be physically moving. in still life paintings, the contour and color juxtapositions make a moving effect in our mind. when contours intersect, when one line takes from another and the like, our eye creates a movement. complementary colors and opposite colors create a vibrancy. as surface becomes live, it makes an impact.

gastanks

gas-tank is a new sculptural form. the ring at the top is supposed to be working as a handle. and the tip of the valve is protected by the metal ring over it from rough handling in transit. then the capsule like body and a base makes it look like a brancucci sculpture. the designers who did this have made a good form in my opinion. one can roll it on the ground. stack them together well. lpg cooking gas has changed the face of cooking in india. in the food industry and at home. the environmental impact is a question that leads to the need for awareness of oil politics, and the rest of it. anyway, a cluster of these red tanks sitting together in a place has something about it.

random incidents

what seem like random incidents in history have a pattern when we look from an arial point of view. if we are inside it, we can not see this. we have to move away to observe it. any habit has a pattern. we replace old with the new habit. pattern has a rhythm. so does a habit. it creates a comfort zone. familiar one. how do we deal with waiting? switch to a habit and feel comfortable indulging in it. to distract from facing the void of the moment. to escape from the emptiness and loneliness of the now. but art making helps one to face this abyss effectively as art has this uncertainty embedded in it anyway. it transforms loneliness to solitude. white noise to harmonious arrangements. emptiness to positive nothingness. vaccum/void to endless space.

square pattern

time and stillness

drip. drip. time drips from the needle of the clock. seconds drip away into eternity. time is a mystery. when one thinks that past and future are loose ends of a long string, and tries to tie them together, the present blinks away. tomorrow merges with yesterday. today can be divided into many 'now's. a 'now' emerges from a 'pre-now' and moves into a 'post-now'. i see my hands typing this. i am here. now. my body is here. i feel the chair i am sitting on. i feel the breath i just took. i am thinking what to type and what not to. the window in front of me in this monochromatic winter has a stillness and silence about it. the window of the previous moment slides away into thin air. next window glides in. that too passes away. the house twitches now and then. subtle noises of the wooden structure break the silence occasionally. everything is changing into something else. moment by moment. all is alive. the closed book in front of me has a stillness about it. but the moment you open it the stillness is gone. I can read the pages. words are alive. i can feel the silence of this table. silent stillness between these apples on it. still life paintings try to show this. silent stillness of this moment. stillness between two thoughts. this is the now. it is here.

co-creation

art recreates the perceived. during the process of art making, it shouts back silently that it created another truth based on the perceived reality. this new born has a life of its own. art maker builds upon this new found truth to push it further to the edge. Then on it exists freely and reflects back to the viewer the artist's perception, in the light of each viewer's life experiences. It jumps back and forth between many perspectives, like a living being. A new language is created. image maker is a visionary in the sense that s/he creates a new window in perception by revealing the mystery little by little. that is his/er journey. daily chaos of raw life is the fuel for this; or without it, art has no edge so to speak.

perception and reality

visual perception is the dominant one. but it is just a window. our awareness does not discriminate between the five senses. we feel as a whole when we are healthy. being alive itself is an intense experience. art deals with visual perception and beyond... explosion of new ideas in contemporary art kicked open many doors for our perception to expand further. subtle can be intense, art does not have to be loud. but loudness can bring silence too. depends on how it's presented. it works well when presentation is simple and more layers are embedded into it skillfully. all the effective works are presenting the mystery in the mundane. how? isn't it the big question? it's beyond language. just looking again at the works of Dali last week at MOMA and Metropolitan, NYC, for example, did it for me. I never used to care for Dali in my younger days. now Dali is a survivor in my mind, for sure. Francis Bacon, Anslem Keifer, and Gerhard Richter to name some. but not all Picassoes, in my opinion. none of the matisses. don't ask me why. my perception is my reality, right?

art and representation

art is not just representing something. it is much more than that. it is not only about the view from the edge but the vision beyond that. it is not just the faded residue left in the twilight sky. it is about intimacy to life. it is about keen observation of every emotion, every drop of rain, every blade of grass, every branch of the tree, every cloud in the sky, and every filth in the street. all inclusive. it is to be felt, not to be explained in detail. inner body tells us the truth than the outer act. feelings are more real than thoughts. they are immediate and honest. thought is a habit. it is a delayed response. most of them are premeditated. not always here and now. calculated responses are not irrelevant, but they are not as true as feelings. art is closer to feelings. it stems out of being one with oneself, here and now.

"it is very simple. make a form. create something new. put together something to make a meaning. say something. point at something relevant. relevant now, here."

art now here

art is here and now, in the present. art sees and connects with everything immediate with a new life and a new spirit. it never takes the easy route of 'celebrating the mediocrity' around. it never turns a blind eye to the intensity of the daily life. it observes life with a new intensity. seemingly mundane things have a history, meaning and a life of its own, when we look at them closely and intimately again. uninteresting things become relevant again when we connect. if we can look at things with no judgements, as they are, mundane becomes special, and our awareness expands.