Important Notice

Lot 1

 

Quick Zoom

Like many of Atul Dodiya's works, the present lot performs a dual role - relaying the artist's pre- occupation with violence close to home, and extrapolating connections with events and happenings in geographically distant lands. Dodiya's works do not only highlight the tragedy associated with acts of violence anywhere in the world, but through his coded imagery he is able to connect dots and scrape together together commonalities that are... Like many of Atul Dodiya's works, the present lot performs a dual role - relaying the artist's pre- occupation with violence close to home, and extrapolating connections with events and happenings in geographically distant lands. Dodiya's works do not only highlight the tragedy associated with acts of violence anywhere in the world, but through his coded imagery he is able to connect dots and scrape together together commonalities that are otherwise hidden from view or ignored.

"While expressing this sense of crisis, Dodiya has been experimenting with formats that permit him to extend his painterly art practice into three dimensions. His intention is that his art, which has always negotiated between the elite-classical and the subaltern-demonic levels of meaning while remaining anchored in the gallery, should articulate itself in a far more public and interactive manner with its viewers. The major formal problem that he has addressed in this context is the reconciliation of the domain of objects with the domain of paintings…With the roller-shutter paintings that he began working on in 2000, Dodiya found a mode by which the schism between objects and paintings could be overcome" (Ranjit Hoskote, "Atul Dodiya - Between the Baroque and the Minimal", Voices of Change - 20 Indian Artists, Marg Publications, Mumbai, 2010, p. 114-5).

Shop shutters, like many of the city's people, have borne silent witness to the violent events and their aftermath that have marked Bombay's recent history - their ubiquitous presence seen all over the mercantile city. Gayatri Sinha explains how Dodiya's shutters are symbolic of business enterprise in Bombay and of global capitalism at large. Offering parallels with other motifs in Dodiya's works, Sinha explains "As vertical repositories, the shutters, the cabinets and the towers all embody materialism and its highly valorized display. In a post colonial society such as India, these structures also represent civilizational progress in different time frames that date from the 19th to the late 20th centuries. In the negotiation between home and city they are emphatic structures of display and of the nature of 'progress' in purely material terms. However the shop with its shutters that come down at the first sign of trouble on the streets… [has] now entered the era of heightened threat perception" ("Atul Dodiya Artist/Arranger", Broken Branches, Bose Pacia exhibition catalogue, 2003, not paginated). The shutters which stage Dodiya's layered narrative are also reminiscent of Bombay, which is a constant point of reference in Dodiya's works.

From the late 1990s, Atul Dodiya has reappropriated archival photographs of Mahatma Gandhi in his work. By using the image of the father of the nation in his idiom, he explores the duality of notions - sentimental and poignant, traditional and modern. Gandhi's life and beliefs draw a sharp contrast with the consumerist tendencies of India today. Yet his persona is constantly evoked via popular images and discourse to evoke a progressive and peaceful India, contrary to the realities of the modern nation. In works like the present lot, a critical change can be observed in the artist's use of Gandhi images alongside other visual codifiers he has developed; all these elements are deployed in a manner that highlights the larger narrative that informs the artist's practice.

Dodiya's artistic intention of reconciling varied concerns which produce a multifaceted narrative is illuminated in the writings of Ranjit Hoskote, who notes "National identity is not a limiting condition for Dodiya, but an operational base for wide-ranging explorations. This stance is especially evident in his suite of ongoing roller-shutter images which are haunted by a sense of the tragic, whether at the epic or the domestic scale, at home or elsewhere. In these images, he counterposes the real and the iconic; he agonizes over the devastating violence of natural disasters and socio-political aberrations, and dwells on the physical fragility yet enduring resonance of art" ("Atul Dodiya - Between the Baroque and the Minimal", Voices of Change - 20 Indian Artists, Marg Publications, Mumbai, 2010, p. 117).

The image of Gandhi, looking into the distance, contains the promise of what is to come; but the opening of the shutter confronts the viewer with contrary realities. A yogic figure is shown holding on to a jagged pillar, appropriated from Constantin Brâncu?i's 'Endless Column'. As the figure urgently mounts this column of infinity, an airplane, with its extrapolated meaning following the events of 9/11, hovers overhead. The heightened sense of urgency these images evoke offers a direct contrast to the content image of Gandhi depicted on the face of the shutter.

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site