A mix of play and irreverence : The Tribune India

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A mix of play and irreverence

“They (Indian miniatures) were originally intended to be hand-held, to be viewed in the same way as they were painted.

A mix of play and irreverence

All images are by Alexander Gorlizki (born 1967) . They carry no captions or titles.



BN Goswamy

“They (Indian miniatures) were originally intended to be hand-held, to be viewed in the same way as they were painted. Looking at arm’s length I get a sense of the whole, of stories being told. There’s no single vanishing point to get sucked into but rather a plane to linger over with different perspectives and focal points. Moving closer I get lost in the breathtaking detail, going in and out of focus, feeling the eye as a muscle. Some forms dissolve and new shapes, colors and patterns take on a mesmerizing life of their own.”

— Alexander Gorlizki

Whenever one is in the Crow Collection of Asian Art at Dallas — as I was, not more than three weeks back — one knows that one is in a very special, almost precious, place. For one can sense that there is, in the very air of the place, a calm elegance, a rare combination of warmth and curiosity, an openness to receive and to give. Even more: there is always something different to see, something that questions and stimulates at once. This time there was on view, apart from the show of Bireswar Sen’s luminous landscapes that I had helped curate, an exhibition of the challenging works of Alexander Gorlizki, British artist, whose name I was familiar with but whose works I had till now not seen in the flesh.

Gorlizki is one of those artists who belong, in respect of art, to one culture but convert, as it were, to another, with supreme ease. Born in London and trained at the Slade School of Art, he migrated, and now lives more or less in two very different places: Brooklyn and Jaipur. Jaipur however looms very large in his work, for that is where, like a few other ‘outsiders’, he succumbed to the charm of traditional Indian miniatures. What they mean and do to him he has said in his own words that I have cited above. The refinement, the rhythms, the exquisite attention to detail found in them, he appears unable to resist. But clearly he is no copyist: he ploughs images, motifs, patterns, the sense of design into his own work, bringing into being a world that bears emphatically his own imprint. Long years ago, in the 16th century in fact, the great chronicler at the court of the emperor Akbar, Abu’l Fazl, spoke of something like ‘dakhl’ poetry — the Persian word dakhl means ‘entry’, ‘intrusion’ — in which a poet would take a line or a phrase from the work of another poet and turn it around, sometimes completely transform it, by adding, editing, excising, moulding, changing the context, with his own words. Great charm, as Abu’l Fazl said, would sometimes result from this, the amended verse eliciting more praise than the original. In a manner of speaking, Gorlizki is in the business of ‘dakhl’.

It is not easy to describe Gorlizki’s work, for it is not one thing that he deals with. Everything comes in: “drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, video, photography and the applied arts”, as Caron Smith, who curated the show at the Crow Collection, writes in her sensitive and provocative notes on it. Using every medium, every possible device, the artist seems to invite the viewer to free himself completely, unburden himself of the baggage he carries, and make whatever sense he can of his work. Incomplete stories are told, parlour games are played, boundaries made to recede or vanish. There is great fun in all this, wit combined with wisdom, visual sensibility limned with thought. As one enters this world, doors keep opening, light bulbs wear the briefest of bikinis, large rodents roam freely about, the goddess Durga peers down from a height, pigeons drink water from dainty cups with straws, old ‘mullahs’ play with strange mechanical devices, mushrooms dominate over trees, Krishna never lets go of his flute. It is all there: part of an ongoing Play that you can lead towards any end that you like.

There are patterns, delicate at times, unruly at others, and of course colours, everywhere. As one moves one’s eyes — one is almost tempted to move one’s hands — over Gorlizki’s images, he makes the viewer aware of his sources, pointing towards references now, lifting passages at other times. Peacock feathers, scrawled calligraphy, knotted coils, ‘jali’ windows, lotus petals, and a myriad other things, form backgrounds to unlikely things happening. Dreams mingle with cartoons, wordy comments jostle against plain statements, everything urging the viewer to fill the blanks in, carry a story further. Connections between unrelated, disparate elements are ‘yours to make’.

Not unoften, Gorlizki might take a fading hand-painted photograph and run with it. In a formal old heirloom-like photograph of a Rajasthani family, thus, — grave looking elders seated in chairs, younger men dutifully standing behind as if guarding, boys and girls squatting on the ground in front, odd objects bespeaking signs of some affluence — he would suddenly replace the head of an elder with that of an elephant, turn his sari-clad spouse seated next to him into a lioness, bring in a pet leopard wearing a rakish turban, station the family dog atop a step-ladder casting a quizzical look. What, one can legitimately wonder, does all this mean? Is it meant to be a comment? A dream? Sheer, irreverent fun? Or, is it perhaps “Plunging into the intersection between freedom and tradition. Free association. Mining visual intelligence. Subverting pomp”: Caron Smith’s thoughtful words spoken in a different context.

In the Gorlizki show at the Crow was brought in even a selection from the artist’s Studio Wall with an array of objects: paintings, drawings, textiles, photographs, torn papers, pieces of ceramic. Where does he get these things from; how does he make his selections? I wonder sometimes if he, Gorlizki, is not like a being in a vimana-like aerial car hovering in the air above with a giant magnet in hand to which earthly things keep sticking, for him to carry them home. Or to his studio.

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