NEGOTIATING MATTER/S
A Balasubramaniam, Arun Kumar HG, Ashim Purkayastha, Jagannath Panda, Jaidev Thakore, Jyotee, Kanchan Chander, Manisha Parekh, Mona Rai, Pooja Iranna, Shalina Vichitra, Shobha Broota, Shukla Sawant, Subba Ghosh, Valsan Koorma Kolleri
Anant Art Gallery, 2005
Catalogue Essay: Roobina Karode
This exhibition offers a deliberate and dramatic contrast in the nature of artworks, in terms of materials, techniques and attitudes. Artists in this group encompass a range of practice, not devoted to any distinct medium or style to articulate ideas and situations. Negotiating Matter/s offers different registers of meanings. Negotiating is not used here in a sense of arriving at a compromise, but as finding a way through to a desired end. At one level the title suggests the engagement of artists with matter/material to arrive at the physicality of form and experience. At another level it references the present state of affairs and current modes of urban art practice.
As a curatorial strategy, in lieu of choosing from already existing or exhibited works of artists, the attempt was to closely examine the thought processes that energize artists to embody their dreams, aspirations and engagements most effectively. This curatorial premise initiated open discussions with select artists, and while we were not originally driven by a theme, it con verged to investigate the negotiations between artistic intentions and materialized form.
(excerpt from the catalogue essay ‘NEGOTIATING MATTER/S‘ by Roobina Karode)