Face it

Gupte says his obsession with masks began after he viewed some wooden masks with religious and ritual undertones from Indonesia at a store called Folkloria in New York. “That got me thinking. Why not an exhibition of masks in India since we have such a rich folk tradition?”

He recounts viewing a tribal dance in Karnataka where two tribals danced as gods wearing painted masks. “The masks’ ability to transform them into what they were not was breathtaking,” says Gupte. It’s that capacity for transformation of masks,which hide and yet reveal so much at the same time,that Gupte wanted the artists to address.

Punater,an avid collector of masks himself,says he gave the artists absolute freedom to do what they wanted with the masks. While artists like Dasgupta and Vishal Shinde use the masks to address issues they’re concerned with such as the conflict between man and nature and the empowerment of women,others like Sachin Kondhalkar and Rajalakshmi Pandit have treated it as a three-dimensional canvas somewhere between a painting and a sculpture.

“There wasn’t any theme for me,” says Kondhalkar. “I was interested in the form and the dimension of the surface and wanted to make it elusive without losing its sculptural sense.”

Somnath Mane’s mask is a mummified image,scarred and ravaged yet sinister in its apparent inability to emote. Sachin Tonape has rendered his mask in the minimalist style,with splotches of red splattered on a black face.

“My masks are abstract with no recognizable forms because most of the time,my thoughts are abstract with colours rather than forms dominating them,” says Tonape.

Mask Factor at Kamalnayan Bajaj Art Gallery,Nariman Point,till March 2