Black Beauty

The first thing that strikes you is the sheer range and diversity of the works from themes to forms,techniques,brushstrokes and media (varying from sculptures to digital prints to paper collages to charcoal drawings).

“Use of black and white has such significance in art,” says Ranjana Steinruecke,gallery owner. “Artists use it as a starting point but often,it’s complete in itself requiring no further embellishment.”

Steinruecke says she wanted to select artists who have,in the past,displayed a strength in black and white. The result is some of the renowned names of Indian art like Akbar Padamsee,Sudhir Patwardhan,Dayanita Singh,Tejal Shah,Jyothi Basu,C K Rajan and V S Gaitonde.

“My black and white drawings denote an element of searching,an exploration of an idea or a theme,whereas I use my paintings to make statements,” says Patwardhan whose untitled pencil drawing of the silhouette of a man will be showcased at the exhibition.

The drawing forms part of a series on Mumbai’s working class that Patwardhan did in the 1970s. “I would observe people in local trains and buses. I decided I wanted to do a series on them.”

The works displayed span more than two decades. Jyothi Basu’s two charcoal drawings from his Resurrection series done in 1998 are intensely personal and use elements of nature to connote the cyclical order of the universe and the artist’s own resurrection after a period of stagnation. C K Rajan’s paper collages of the ’90s,on the other hand,are a scathing diatribe on the radical changes brought about by economic liberalisation in India and increasing political and religious fundamentalism.

Tejal Shah’s photograph Group Catalepsy or The Ship of Fools (2008),from her Hysteria series,is a throwback to Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilization. “I used black and white because I was referencing original archival photographs taken between 1850 and early 1900s,” says Shah. “You see the world in colour. So black and white gives a sense of the fantastical as it is one step away from reality.”

What is interesting to note is the myriad ways in which the colour black is used by the artists. It is a solid mass twisted into exotic forms in Juul Kraijer and Mrinalini Mukherjee’s sculptures. In stark contrast,Sarika Mehta uses it sparsely,almost reverently. Dayanita Singh and Shah delve deep into the crevices of the mind with their black and white photography. Black is smudged into shadows in Basu’s fantastical drawings.

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