| Hole in the art Forty years later art will be left to the viewer to imagine, foresees artist Darshana Vora WHAT will art look like 40 years from now? Will artists continue making portraits, landscapes, abstract and installation art several decades from now? Looking at art today one can't help get the feeling of having seen everything and done all that there's to explore in this two-dimensional medium. People have painted white on white, emptied buckets of colour on canvas and exhibited body hair in the sacred precincts of an art gallery. What next? Even as you wonder this, city artist Darshana Vora's new works at Lakeeren Art Gallery come across as one of the many possibilities. Or is it? Arshiya Lokhandwala, curator of the gallery says, "In this exhibition Darshana tries to give us a glimpse of what one could expect to find and sense in the years to come within the practice of art. She suggests through her work a strong shift in the material aspect of objects located within the futuristic look of the works." The collection is titled Image Repositories and Holes and is conceptualised as a ypothetical situation in art in 2040. All works are made of rectangular, white and black PVC sheets and, acrylic yellow sheets, which are folded or curved at different angles. These are conceived as repositories or spaces that would contain the viewers' imagination. By looking into the white containers, mounted on eye-level pedestals, a viewer of art in the future is likely to be expected to find his/her personal expression. The artist is positioning her present creations as functional art and Lokhandwala xplains, "She suggests through her work that there could well be he possibility for individuals to conceive and visualise and construct their own work." Darshana's creations become complete art works only when a viewer looks into it, until then it is merely an object with a function that it's about to perform. As a viewer in today's time, when one peeps into these geometrical forms, the first image one sees is one's reflection on the yellow acrylic sheet. To he able to step back and look beyond that is difficult if not impossible at this point. Maybe the experience of an art viewer of the future would be in keeping with Darshana's hypothesis. That the artist is offering just a space and a platform for the viewer's experience and does not have an aesthetic value by itself raises several questions like - what is the role and function of an artist of the future? Would the work of art be a co-creation of the artist and the viewer, since its based on interaction? While the answers to these would open up debates on various issue in the coming years, in the current scenario Darshana's works leave us bewildered and wondering. What will art look like 4O years from now? 'As I see it it art making has gone through an evolutionary process from illusionist representation to an obsessive involvement with its own formal devices and from there to a very narrow self absorbed focus on the conceptual and then to art that explores material and context. As a logical next step in this process, I see the art of the future consisting mainly of intelligent interactive immersive virtual multi media experiences totally removed from materiality- and existing entirely in cyberspace.' Baiju Parthan, artist 'Already in the west the process of minimising and elimination has been ongoing. Lt happened five years ago at the Documenta (exhibition) which was about perception nor art (as a visual experience). There won't be any art (visually) but the bare theory.' Shireen Gandhy, gallerist 'Already art is more about cerebral and intellectual perception than visual perception. It is not going to be just on a two dimensional surface hut performance oriented.' Jaideep Mehrotra, artist 'ART will remain forever. Visually it may look different but conceptually and the belief will be the same. Joseph Beuys once said that everyone is an artist. I feel that more people will become aware of art and there will be more space for it.' Bose Krishnamachari, artist Jasmine Shah Varma The List. Mid Day www.chalomumbai.com Tuesday July 2, 2002 |
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