Life in Miniature

With this,Gorlizki found a mode to channelise his West-bred independent voice through an Indian form of painting he had fallen in love with ever since his first visit to the subcontinent 30 years ago. “My eyes are always buzzing in India. Sometimes the influences might be other art forms such as sign-painting or tile work in a mosque,but it could also be a sari border design or the patterns on a lungi,” says the British artist,whose collective set of works,titled We Like It Here,We’re Not Moving,is being shown at the Amrita Jhaveri Project in Walkeshwar Road,Mumbai. Despite his strong creative relationship with India and his multiple previous visits,this is the first time Gorlizki’s works are being showcased through an exhibition in the country. The exhibition is on till October 26.

Gorlizki’s first exposure to miniature paintings was through his mother,an antique shop owner,with whom he spent his formative years trotting across Central and South Asia. “There is something liberating about the visual intensity of an object that isn’t specifically made to be ‘art’. Even a toolbox from Nuristan will be decorated with beautiful ornate carving — it’s quite different from what I’d find at Home Depot,” he says.

He keeps trying to infuse these skills into his visual language by way of collaboration,sometimes with a shoemaker (with whom he created a formal shoe that split at front into two) and sometimes a spectacle repairman (who created glasses for three pairs of eyes for him). Similarly,his paintings seek to employ the fine brush strokes of delicate intricacy,a rare ability that he thinks artists of northern India possess.

“The skills practiced in Rajasthan in some cases yield amazing abilities,but there is very little originality or invention of new forms. The painters make copies of traditional paintings for the tourist market. There is very little need for invention or originality in this. But on the other hand,the practice makes the skill extraordinary and you can clearly see the level of skill by comparing it to earlier references,” explains the 45-year-old artist,who is based in New York.

Gorlizki,therefore,constantly subverts the traditional form by bringing in his own influences — tartan knitwear,’40s American advertisements,Japanese ceramics and so on. In one of his works,titled We Can Get Through This Together,a kissing couple based on the leading actors of the Jean-Luc Goddard film,Breathless,look out of a Mughal window at a bizarre imagery of Indian mythology and pop culture.