Important Notice

"One of the first Indian artists to embrace the digital media and the topographies of cyberspace, Parthan combines his painterly commitment with an equally strong interest in science and technology: the brush and palette knife serve him as well as programming code and source feed from television channels or the Net do. He is also academically trained in the discipline of comparative mythology, which informs his art both consciously and at a... "One of the first Indian artists to embrace the digital media and the topographies of cyberspace, Parthan combines his painterly commitment with an equally strong interest in science and technology: the brush and palette knife serve him as well as programming code and source feed from television channels or the Net do. He is also academically trained in the discipline of comparative mythology, which informs his art both consciously and at a subliminal level." (Ranjit Hoskote, "Passwords," Baiju Parthan: A User's Manual, Mumbai: Afterimage Publishing, 2006, pp. 15, 17)

The present lot, Spill, was part of Dislocation (Milljunction Part 2), a 2011 exhibition at Aicon Gallery in London. Parthan's work is a lament on the rapidly changing realities of urban space. The urban land in question is Mumbai, once associated with textile mills and one-room chawls. Now a landscape of high rise towers, the city offers little refuge to the mill workers who once contributed to its developing modernity.

Parthan depicts this juxtaposition of the old with the new in Spill. Two identical taxis mirror each other against the backdrop of a receding factory, while a military helicopter hovers above. Contrasting washes of sepia and blue-the former suggesting a bygone era -separate the past from the present. As the blue engulfs the space and threatens to diminish the sepia-toned past, Parthan drives his point home further. "The old fiat taxis which are being phased out, the chawl building where workers used to live, and also the man on the street, mostly the labourer as a vestige of the Mill presence. How the familiar is erased all the time to make way for the new." (Baiju Parthan, Dislocation: Milljunction Part 2, London: Aicon Gallery, 2011, online)

Interspersed on the surface of this composition are numerical computer codes, a recurring motif in Parthan's works. These dripping symbols of cyberspace further illustrate how virtual reality and technology have overwhelmed our physical space.

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