‘Peek into contemporary art practices’ - Talk by Giridhar Khasnis

Talk | June 09, 2016 | Elective 3 | tulip sinha

Giridhar Khasnis is a Bangalore based art writer, curator and columnist.  In his illustrated talk, he will focus on six international artists by showcasing their exciting and varied approaches that go far beyond traditional modes of art creation. The artists are: Sam Taylor Woods, JR, Ron Mueck, Spencer Tunick, Bharati Kher, Ranjani Shettar & Arturo Vittori. The talk began with how people claim that they don’t understand art, let alone contemporary art, to which Giridhar said, well then they need to start to understand somewhere, sometime! Considering I can be accused of feeling or saying the same thing every time someone invites me to an art exhibition, this was just what I needed to hear and I was glad that I made the start by attending the talk in the first place. He showed selected works of 6 artists from the around the world and spoke about what made their work stand out for not just being beautiful pieces of work in the conventional sense of the word, but what them appear extraordinary and the answers were many, either the kind of intent they had, the impact they created or the measures (by design or accidental) taken by the artists to see their ideas through. In the section below, I will provide a short description of the artists (5 of 7), along with the work we saw and the discussions that followed. Sam Taylor Woods Sam Taylor-Johnson is a contemporary British photographer and filmmaker. Interested in the relationship between identity and appearance, her work examines the contradictions between our interior lives and our exterior presentations of the self. Stills from the movie: Still Life Salient features: -         -        Silent film (like most classical films) -       No camera movement, hence still -       Still life, anything but still -       Dynamism in the subject itself in the form of transitions over real time and       space -       Reality depicted in 3+ minutes of celluloid time and space -       Birth/Life, Decay and Death (cyclic and dynamic) -       Not a pretty picture -       Perseverance on the part of the artist -       Not a great subject, but the perspective of the artist is what transforms it        into an extraordinary treatment of the subject Ron Mueck London-based sculptor Ron Mueck, formerly a model maker and puppeteer for children's television and films, has been creating fine art sculptures since 1996. Using resin, fiberglass, silicone, and many other materials, Mueck constructs hyperrealistic likenesses of human beings, while playing with scale. The detailed sculptures are captivating when viewed up close, as they may be many times larger or smaller than expected. Salient features: -          -       Statuephilia: Statuephilia is a collection of contemporary statue pieces on show at the               British Museum featuring artists such as Antony Gormley, Damien Hirst, Ron Mueck, Noble         & Webster and Marc Quinn. -       Hyper-realistic -       Material manipulation -       Scale and Spatial arrangement as tools that have been explored -       Subversion at the level of sale and where the artefact is placed,                      against what -       Not a pretty picture, but a story nonetheless -       Perseverance on the part of the artist -       Not a great subject, but the throws the raw, uncontrived reality at the             viewer JR JR owns the biggest art gallery in the world and the world is his gallery. He exhibits freely in the streets of the world, catching the attention of people who are not typical museum visitors. His work mixes Art and Act, talks about commitment, freedom, identity and limit. After he found a camera in the Paris subway, he did a tour of European Street Art, tracking the people who communicate messages via the walls. Then, he started to work on the vertical limits, watching the people and the passage of life from the forbidden undergrounds and roofs of Paris. Salient features: -         -       Taking art beyond the elite gallery spaces and taking reality as the bare           canvas -       Making use of real people as subjects that are glaringly relatable -       Scale and Spatial arrangement as tools that have been explored -       Movement of the art facilitated in some cases by using vehicles as                  backdrops  -       Subversion at the level of scale and where the artefact is placed, against       what -       Not a pretty picture, but a story nonetheless -       Perseverance on the part of the artist -       Not a great subject, but the throws the raw, uncontrived reality at the              viewer, any passer-by in this case Ranjani Shettar Ranjani Shettar, a contemporary artist from Bangalore transforms natural phenomena into magical forms. She has the ability work with a range of materials; her choice of media a disparate roster of the organic and human-made, including tamarind kernel paste, muslin, lacquer, wood, automotive paint, fishing line, beeswax, dyed thread, latex rubber and steel.

Salient features:

-         -        Manipulation of not just material but the mundane to look extraordinary
-       Materials as the object and subject
-       Space as canvas
-       Scale and Spatial arrangement as tools that have been explored
-       Dynamism in the exhibit, because the arrangement can be customized to the space
-       Subversion at the level of scale and where the artefact is placed, against what
-       Perseverance on the part of the artist
-       The artefact starts on paper but evolves physically in space with each element going on it and emerges as a      single unit

Interestingly, Ranjani Shetty’s work was one of the only 2 works of Indian origin that too women that were shared during this event and Mr. Khasnis had an interesting point to make as to why he chose them.

He said that unlike international artists, Indian artists lack the ability to communicate their work to the world.

Sadly, I am tempted to agree. Most of them are very good with what they do, but fail to convey their articulation. In most cases, the artwork or artefact gets a story from someone who is interpreting and penning it down on behalf of the artist, thereby losing some of the essence or appearing contrived.

Content without Experience you think?

Warka Water Project

http://www.warkawater.org/

A water harvesting project piloted in Ethiopia led by the CEO and Founder of Warka Water, Arturo Vittori from Italy.

Recent studies show that only 34% of Ethiopia’s population has access to an improved water supply. This implies that approximately 60 million people lack safe water.

To help improve this dramatic situation, they made it their mission to find a solution and help these people with Warka Water (WW): An environmentally, socially and financially sustainable solution to portable water. They identified a crisis and took that up as a challenge.

The picture below is the evolution of the solution, a structure that traps and collects water as it precipitates from the ambient humidity.