Twelve artists decode relationship between time and human beings in a forthcoming exhibition. By S Mallik
From distance, it will look like chocolate cubes with droplets of caramel. Up close, it’s a work of ceramic by artist Vinod Daroz who is trying to explain the futility of time and the vain efforts of humans to hang onto memories. Ceramic as an art medium can be fragile but it is perhaps the apt medium to convey the messages of time and its various associations with the mind, feels artist Vineet Kacker. In a forthcoming exhibition titled Digging Time, 12 ceramic artists from across the country have come together to explore the nature of time in their own distinct way.
“Time is something that always leaves an immediate deep impression in our minds. Very much in the same way that when you make an impression on clay it immediately registers. That was why ceramics was an obvious option,” says Kacker, who is also the curator. Not every artist looks at a subject in a similar manner. While artist Manisha Bhattacharya and Vinod Daroz’s works primarily deal with memory as something that has passed away and does not hold much relevance in the time that we are living at the moment, Antara Singh’s series depict the constant intersection of thoughts, dreams, feelings and emotions at various points in time.
Kacker shares, “Antara’s work comprise of linear lines going in various directions. It denotes that in every minute of life, the million things that run around in our minds intersect.” The exhibits will establish the connection between nature and the human mind — how the state of mind can affect what time shows us. He explains, “When you are happy, time seems to fly by and when you are bored or going through a rough patch in life, it feels like a standstill. It all depends on the perception of an individual.”
On a similar level the curator will also try to explain the concept of kal, which in the Indian language means both yesterday and tomorrow. “According to spiritual traditions, you are missing today. Today, the present, is the only thing we know because past is just a memory and future is just a dream,” Kacker points out.The passing away of time will be beautifully brought out by Dipali Daroz’s series of ancient tools of the neolithic age. According to the curator, it will highlight evolution — the time from where rough tools were made by our ancestors using stones, sticks and wood to the modern-age tools.
“The depth and creativity of the artworks are as unlimited as the artist’s imagination,” says Kacker. That’s why his contribution to the exhibition is inspired by the Buddhist philosophy of Mandala, which means “state of no mind.” It is the symbolic aspect of the philosophy that urged him to mould it into clay. He says, “It is the physical depiction of training the mind to be in the moment that you are living.
”How we feel about certain things often changes with the passage of time. Mudita Bhandari ponders the same in her work. “There will be several forms in shape of houses along human forms and they will keep changing places to denote how individual preferences change,” he says.