GALLERYSKE

GALLERYSKE presents its next show, Four Projects featuring works by Sunoj D, Abhishek Hazra, Abir Karmakar and Orijit Sen. With distinctly diverse vocabularies and use  of different media, the artists’ works on display are quintessential of each one’s wide--‐ranging practice. Though the individual projects share the same space, they are independent of one another do not have a thematic  underline  or curatorial presence.

Bangalore--‐based Sunoj D examines the relationship between human--‐beings and nature and how man attempts to re--‐create nature and transform it to living room memories--‐ be it through images  of landscapes, shells collected on a beach or even plastic plants in vases where the artificial collectibles almost begin to resemble the real. Articulating these ideas, the artist uses natural/artificial and real/imagined visual images in his work.

Abhishek Hazra’s work continues his engagement with the social history of science. In the new work being exhibited, he focuses on the origins of Bengali scientific terminology in the early nineteenth century and looks critically at the politics of translation. The work also tries to contextualize the dynamics of its own consumption: how seemingly self--‐anthropologizing artworks tickle the liberal sentiments of history’s sovereign authors.

A single channel video, Abir Karmakar’s Scent of a Bed explores the position of an individual in a large family structure where personal space is  almost inconceivable. In May 1994, the artist’s first encounter  with a big city encouraged him to sleep without clothes in a hotel bed, which made him sense the absent presence of the previous occupants. In May 2010, the artist invited three similar aged men, all from joint families to sleep without any clothes on a bed on three separate but consecutive nights. The frame remains constant but the overlapped videos allow for a distorted reference of perception as the three men go through the rituals of sleeping.

Orijit  Sen, acclaimed as the first graphic novelist of India was invited to do a mural at the Virasat-- e--‐Khalsa, a multi--‐media museum and cultural centre in Punjab. The hand--‐ painted mural, 20m high and 75m wide involved 20 artists and took almost two and a half years to complete. The minutely detailed and abundantly narrative work captures the essence of Punjab and  its people --‐ their spirit and everyday life, their rituals and challenges. These vibrant fragments are set in the agrarian context of the state and account for its historical and modern positions. For the show, Sen will show a limited edition series of digital artworks from this work.