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Lot 148

 

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A hybrid of painting and sculpture, the present lot exemplifies Atul Dodiya’s distinctive approach of incorporating diverse images, objects, and texts into layered and complex works. These cover a variety of themes from autobiographical to political, historical, religious and aesthetic, though their treatment is never literal. The work comprises three parts-a gallows pole, a mirror, and a painted panel inscribed with poetry by 12th-century poet... A hybrid of painting and sculpture, the present lot exemplifies Atul Dodiya’s distinctive approach of incorporating diverse images, objects, and texts into layered and complex works. These cover a variety of themes from autobiographical to political, historical, religious and aesthetic, though their treatment is never literal. The work comprises three parts-a gallows pole, a mirror, and a painted panel inscribed with poetry by 12th-century poet Allama Prabhu, translated from Kannada by A K Ramanujan and published in his book Speaking of Siva. Prabhu was a prominent saint of the Lingayat movement and wrote Vachana poetry-that flourished during the 11th and 12th centuries-which expounded the ideals of social reform and devotion to the Hindu god Shiva.

Speaking about the present lot Dodiya says, “When you are looking at the work, you are reading the poetry, you can actually see it as a painting, and there’s a mirror attached so the viewer sees himself. I find the gallow beautiful as a sculptural piece, as an aesthetic object, but we know that it’s a sign of punishment; it’s a fearful object, it depicts death. I was thinking that the fear of death is something we carry all the time. We are not always aware, but we do carry the fear of death inside. If you see this work from a distance, you feel a little shocked by the whole thing, but if you start observing it, start reading the poems, start looking at the painting and see yourself, you start enjoying a work of art and the aesthetic and the beauty which a work of art generates and if you start seeing life and the living, the fear of death might go away.” (The artist quoted in a lecture series at the Lalit Kala Akademi, Chandigarh, 2013)

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