Understanding spaces

Gallery Art Motif presents an exhibition titled ‘Spatial’ from February 5 to March 4, featuring works by three contemporary artists: Kishor Shinde, Nidhi Khurana and Shalini S Vichitra. There is a synergy between the three artists’ works in their spatial renderings – be it aerial views, contours and mapping of cities, or architectural-like geometrical constructs.

Kishor Shinde alludes to his abstracted vision of the world around through blocks and strips of collaged colour papers that has evolved as a primary medium for these “Untitled’ series. The shifting cityscape or industrial landscape of neatly cut and orchestrated shapes is interspersed with black lines which appear as thick, fragile, almost invisible or subtly dotted ones. Restricted to definitive geometric shapes with sharp edges, indicative forms in these works create illusions of high-rises under construction, bridges dissolving in air, or mobile towers blurring into a smoggy horizon. Shinde cuts and tears bits of paper by simple tools or by hands. Those cutworks, when placed against a white background, create illusions of armatures of architecture. They seem like industrial landscapes, morphing into urban high-rises, while a view outside the window allowing bits and pieces of domesticities, transform into mobile towers or high-tension wires.   Colour planes overlap and intersect with each other through an assertive opacity — perhaps a symbolic expression of urban existence through proclamation.

For Spatial, Nidhi Khurana explores her relationship with the natural world by mapping her experiences as cyclical graphs of time, inspired by a diversity in cognitive approaches such as the Australian aboriginal dreamtime, the Mappemonde, the yatra (pilgrimage) maps, representations from Islamic cosmological diagrams and illuminated manuscripts. Nidhi uses natural dyes, 24 carat gold and silver, handmade paper and silk to document her experience of the world. Maps and the idea of mapping has been central to her practice. It alludes to a physical fear of being lost but also points to a lost civilization or a civilization losing its way. Nidhi is interested in exploring fields, forests, gardens, ecosystems, cities, kitchens, factories and workshops to discover ways in which matter can be created and destroyed.

Shalina S Vichitra’s art practice embodies an interaction of natural and man-made spaces. Associations, experiences, interactions become part of a larger issue as they address the complexities and contradictions of urban living. The crux is an individual as part of a whole populace. Aspects of geography, architecture, landscape and cartography are very much intertwined with her art making process. She is drawn to the chunks of land mass, the rocks, the layers of the earth, fossils peeling and peeping through more layers and the masses of built environment and fragments of architecture all playing a role in developing her imagery that serves as a metaphor to voice her concerns. She likes to engage with the idea of ….. constructing, deconstructing, positioning – dis-positioning… locating – dislocating, peeling layers giving rise to an experiential space. The tools of cartography and the built environment address the complex subject of ‘belonging’ and the fragile balance between natural world and human habitation. These associations become part of a larger issue to address the contradictions of urban living unravelling an alternate reality.