THE GREAT INDIAN LAUGHTER GALLERY

For years,artists have used humour,mostly dark,to make a subversive or sarcastic point. Having humour override a message so that it elicits laughter for pleasure is a more recent phenomenon. The India Art Summit,held in January,where humourous and highbrow art shared space,was a pointer that artists were no longer scared to laugh out loud. Gallerists like Chauhan are saluting the trend,indicating that 2011 may be the year when artists move away from heavy work to something lighter. “I have done extremely serious works that talk of sociopolitical issues,there are ones which refer to the history of painting and there is work which is light and has a sense of irreverence and fun,” says Dodiya,who has referenced various art forms — from the calendar art of Raja Ravi Varma to the high art of Marcel Duchamp. He adds that several prominent artists,from the late Bhupen Khakhar and the Ahmedabad-based Amit Ambalal to KG Subramanyan and Manjunath Kamath are known for their wit.

“Humour is pivotal to my work,” says Kamath,who has created a digital collage of a donkey piled high with various items as well as a sculpture by Ravinder Reddy. Ambalal takes on the man-animal relationship.

His painting,Kukkutaasana depicts a man aping the posture of a rooster. “I was inspired to make this after looking at a self-improvement yoga book. In the painting,I have depicted a hen being attracted to a man after he learns the aasana,” chuckles Ambalal. “Birds and animals are what they are,one often wonders why humans have to do so much self-improvement just to be human?”

Another exhibition,this time at Nature Morte,also tickles the funny bone. Artist duo Sumir Tagra and Jiten Thukral use their signature style — advertising packaging,retro-chic images of old radios,cars and musical instruments among others — to pun,not only on the business of living and consumerism,but also HIV-AIDS. “Our project is actually about safe sex practices,” says Tagra. “Jiten and I started working on HIV-AIDS campaign when we were at O&M in early 2000. We felt we could better the existing campaigns with a fun approach to design and social issues,” says the NID graduate who moved from advertising into the sphere of fine art. On display are ‘products’ like bottles of “Bosedke” and smutty juxtapositions of mating parrots stencilled onto old televisions that drive home the point,in a fun way. At the India Art Summit,the duo’s booth boasted a pool table and was one of the most crowded. People were playing pool while taking in the subliminal messages like “Put on the condom and play it safe,” that were spelt out through recurring images of coital couples hidden under big pink flowers that formed the wallpaper of the stall. “Our research is on an urban demographic so we created an elegant play area for people to enjoy and get all the messages that we’d planted around. We also draw parallels between the game of snooker and the game of sex,” says Tagra.

German artist Piero Steinle argues that laughter is the only way to overcome the trivia of life. His work The Triumph of Laughter was a three channel video that showed at the Aicon Gallery stall at the India Art Summit. The München-based artist grabbed everyone’s attention with his video work that showed images of people laughing,from an old toothless man in Jerusalem to children,nuns,teenagers and women at their homes to men working in the fields. He has even captured an Indian cricket team in splits. “In the video,the very physical activity of laughing evolves as the most absurd human language,with the weapons of contagious absurdity and marvel. Laughter is celebrating,in a very ironical way,its global triumphs from young to old and from east to west over a world discouraged by problems,” says Steinle. Has art finally noticed this victory of laughter?