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Lot 32

 

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An artist who ardently participates in the creation and consumption of contemporary culture, Bose Krishnamachari frequently accesses global archives of information relating to several different disciplines in the creation of his canvases and mixed media installations. “Krishnamachari’s oeuvre includes a manipulation of photographic elements and bright abstract spaces. While his canvases operate on a formal capacity, with their spectacular... An artist who ardently participates in the creation and consumption of contemporary culture, Bose Krishnamachari frequently accesses global archives of information relating to several different disciplines in the creation of his canvases and mixed media installations. “Krishnamachari’s oeuvre includes a manipulation of photographic elements and bright abstract spaces. While his canvases operate on a formal capacity, with their spectacular combination of color, texture and contrasting designs, they also have a strong intellectual basis. Influenced by the conceptual slant of much modern British art, a result of his tenure at Goldsmith College, London, Krishnamachari makes us rethink the connection between signifier and signified. He questions the validity of the image as a purveyor of fixed meaning. The excessive clarity of Krishnamachari’s photo-realist motifs is imbued with an unsettlingly surreal aura and his abstract patterns embody a shifting network of signs” (Paths of Progression, Saffronart and Bodhi Art exhibition catalogue, 2005, unpaginated).

In the present lot, a vivid large-format canvas, Krishnamachari juxtaposes flat planes of burnt colours with a Braille-like series of decorative dots and a rendering of art gallery patrons in the signature photorealist style that defined his early body of work. Plot is a humourous comment on the relationship between artist and viewer, creator and consumer. Here, the artist himself has become one of the viewers, trying to respond to what seems like a series of entirely black paintings. Putting himself in the shoes of his viewers, the artist is perhaps attempting to understand his creations from a fresh point of view – one that is not rooted in a personal creative process, and is not connected with their conceptualization and production. Acknowledging that subjectivity plays a large role in responding to visual art, especially a body of work as conceptual as his own, Krishnamachari seems to urge his viewers, like those in this frame, to respond to art only after questioning and interpreting it.

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