Maybe Chinese thinker Confucius had a point when he said,Everything has its beauty,but not everyone sees it. Photographer-painter Alan Chadwicks art certainly believes in this maxim. The 53-year-old Chadwick has a day job at the Facilities Management of the US Embassy,but in his spare time he focuses his Canon on simple,everyday objects that we do not notice. His solo tilted Standing at the American Embassy,on till June 19,portrays discarded objects of everyday use. Chadwick,who studied art at the National School of Art and Design in Dublin is not the first to zoom in on the mundane. However,his approach is rather unusual he uses extreme close-up and renders the object as abstractions. Textures like the tyre marks left by a vehicle or a rusting nail hammered onto a piece of wood,different shades of a skeletal leaf or the way light falls on the folds and creases of a white sheet,Chadwick has captured the inherent beauty within each object something we tend to overlook. The collection includes 20 photographs put together over one year and seven paintings done in the last four months. Each work is part of the series titled Standing Series and the objects in them impersonate the decay of time and its corroding utility. Most photographs have been taken in the streets of Delhi by Chandwick,who has been living in India for three years. Scratched 3 is my favourite, he says. Chadwick adds that he tries to use objects that do not have any previously established iconic value to them. He says,The subject matter cannot become too important. The idea is to engage the viewer to pick what they want to interpret from the photographs. It is a spontaneous process,yet not completely random.
