Eminent artist Vijay Kowshik believes that one has to feel to create; it all depends on what is there within. His exhibition Parsing — The Mind’s Eye strives to extract experiences from the collective consciousness. Team Viva reports
There is a mask series in Parsing- The Mind’s Eye, artist Vijay Kowshik’s exhibition. Through the works he attempts to narrate how the habit of wearing masks has become natural for people. He says that mask is something that we see in everyday’s life, which is the attitude of many of us to other people and the environment. And even the mask keeps changing which is natural.
The show, progressing at India International Centre, is a collection of around 50 works of glass and light. He has created the mask series in 2016, two among the works this year where as the rest are from his old collection. The artist has kept all of them untitled. “Why there should be a title, naming a work implies limiting people’s imagination. It’s very interesting to see people interpreting a work based on their life and background. They would start thinking in so many ways,” he smiles.
In three other works what is narrated is the feeling of being lost in a big city: “When one comes from a village to a city like Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore, how would they feelIJ It’s all about the feeling of being lost in a big city, nothing else; even fear. These are my works which I created during my stay in the US, Slovak and Hungary.”
On choosing glass as the medium he says, “I used to work with ceramics long time back. I had a mentor in ceramics- Devi Prasad- who was my father’s class mate. Then I started experimenting with glass and I was very fortunate that I got invitations from many countries like Italy, France, Hungary, Sweden and Slovak to work with the medium. I worked in the US as well for a year to work on a project. Hence over the years I began to like and understand the medium.”
So how friendly the medium is for an artistIJ, “If you understand a medium on how it behaves and moves, it becomes friendly with you. Then you can take out whatever your creativity demands from it. Then you and the medium would be moving in the same direction. In the beginning it would be as difficult as a painter sketching on the canvas.”
The artist has made some of the works interactive with music in the show. One can listen to music while touches those works - “Music reminds of the time which I have spent in churches and cathedrals. I have done installations there as well.” In another work what is coming out, while you touch, is the screaming of a woman which the artist describes as response to atrocities on women.
The show has certain abstracts as well. “Creating abstract with glass is as tough or easy as you make any other work,” he says. There are portraits also in which people are seen broken. Then there is a panel which he calls Mahabharata: “I tried to represent the partition of India through that, comparing it with the incidents in the epic. In Mahabharata also war and divide were caused by some vested interests, otherwise both thepandavas and kauravas could be together.”
There is one series of torso, which is the result of particular period of work; ‘When you start working on certain thing, then a series of it will follow. Only thing is that you need to feel the work, depends on what is happening within you. Then he asks, pointing to a work, what does it look likeIJ. When we say like a lion, he chuckles and reacts; “Yes it could be or even a tiger.” The only specific work in the show, which he calls more realistic, is that of Buddha.
There is a work on B C Sanyal as well which the artist created when the former turned 100. He says that it’s the accumulation of experience over the years that determines the time to create a work.
The exhibition will conclude on Friday.