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Lot 147

 

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The present lot is part of a series of works Atul Dodiya created for the 2005 exhibition, Cracks in Mondrian, at Bose Pacia in New York. It exemplifies the artist’s palimpsestic practice that draws from diverse influences spanning art history, autobiographical detail, and the socio-political landscape of India. The series was inspired by the craquelure-ridden works of Piet Mondrian that Dodiya encountered at London’s Tate Modern in 2001,... The present lot is part of a series of works Atul Dodiya created for the 2005 exhibition, Cracks in Mondrian, at Bose Pacia in New York. It exemplifies the artist’s palimpsestic practice that draws from diverse influences spanning art history, autobiographical detail, and the socio-political landscape of India. The series was inspired by the craquelure-ridden works of Piet Mondrian that Dodiya encountered at London’s Tate Modern in 2001, which resonated with the ruptured land of his home state Gujarat that was devastated by an earthquake the same year. Critic Ranjit Hoskote describes these works as, “...many things simultaneously: they are maps of once-and-future places imagined by an heir to lost kingdoms, a survivor of defeated empires; they are also surfaces marked with abstractionist freedom and painterly delight by an artist who has more often operated with figure, allegory and elliptical narrative [...] if these paintings interrogate the high abstraction of Mondrian, with Dodiya addressing the relevance of the modernist legacy by means of pictoriality rather than discourse, they also transcend their limitations as painted surfaces by a simple yet elegant device that admits them… to the experiential space of the sculpture-installation.” (Ranjit Hoskote, “Framing the Title Deeds: Reflections on Atul Dodiya’s ‘Cracks in Mondrian’”, Atul Dodiya: Cracks in Mondrian, New York: Bose Pacia, 2005)

By superimposing a cartographic rendering of Indian provinces on a Mondrian-like grid, partially framed by industrial PVC piping, Dodiya invokes themes of art historical discourse, colonialism, identity, ownership, and belonging. Patches of paint disrupt the pristine surface of Mondrian’s grid. Spreading out almost like a wound, a luminous pink patch represents the Mughal suba (province) of Awadh as depicted by 18th-century French cartographer Jean-Baptiste- Joseph Gentil, who served in the French army in colonial India before joining the court of Shuja- ud-daula, the Nawab of Awadh. The grey patches reference more recent history, mimicking the cement patches used to repair cracks on building facades. Leitmotifs of this series, these elements “summon up the trope of repair, reparation” and “suggest the difficult, faulty and vexed process of restoration” in a region of deep historical and cultural significance that has witnessed immense violence and turmoil in recent years. (Hoskote, 2005)

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