by narendra raghunath
(Sudarshan Shetty:Little over the last ten years, Sudarshan Shetty has emerged as one of the prominent Indian contemporary artists, whose work has been received with applause across the world. A painter turned conceptual artist, Sudarshan Shetty has been known for his enigmatic application of mechanical movements to his art work. Unlike other kinetic sculptors of the time he is often identified with his treatment of subject through brazen exposure and calibrated movements. Sudarshan Shetty has had many shows across the world, including NGMA, Lalit Kala Akademi, Tate Modern, Guggenheim Museum, Gallery and Bhau Daji Lad Museum. )
The coffee table book brought out by Gallery SKE and Tilton Gallery “The more I die lighter I get” as an art work on Sudarshan Shetty and his work of art opens with an excerpt from Sharmistha Mohanty’s writing. It talks about a “grandfather” and a tornado. Unlike in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magic realism where the teenage beauty vanishes on carpet leaving lovers of the village desperate, here when the buffalo flies, ponds become dry, fish become flower by the ferocity of the tornado. The grandfather encounters his existence and unlike as in Marquez’s villager, it is not fantasy, it is real. (1)
For him, the tornado redefines the existential meaning of his life. It is not a revelation, neither a metaphysical indoctrination, as she continues “the wind transformed things, gave them new names. And not only new names, it gave them new possibilities” (2).
Strangely those possibilities again get redefined when that grandfather moves on to city with that wind. Within the walls with windows, in city, they enter “only in small wisps, like a child’s breath. Once only once it had knocked over a glass”(3)
Printed on a page with a photo of his installation from his 2003 Consanguinity where wind musical instrument bleeds, Sharmistha Mohanty’s writing excerpt becomes the preface for Sudarshan Shetty and his work.
As a tentative regimentation for understanding nuances of conceptual art, Charles Harrison in his Conceptual art: Art and Language, quotes Sol Le Witt from his ‘Relatively speculative Paragraphs on conceptual art’ wherein it says “Ideas alone can be works of art: they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical” (5)
Although often Sudarshan Shetty does not defy those initial idioms of conceptual art, he certainly transcends the intent of work of art from its conceptual regimentation. He clearly deviates from strategizing an idea only to evoke cognitive modification, as conceived by conceptual artists, to a more expansive play where a piece of work becomes work of art by altering the frames of references.
Certainly it would be inaccurate to say that conceptual artists did not had their own share of play as Rudolf E Kunzli in his essay on Duchamp says “Duchamp calls himself therefore a clown who strategically, ironically, amusingly mixes up everything, turns everything inside out, upside down, in order to dissolve the principle of identity and to open up the field of indifferent free play where “there is no solution, because there is no problem”(6).
But as mentioned earlier, unlike those doyens of conceptual art, for Sudarshan Shetty when he strategically, ironically, amusingly mixes up everything, turns everything inside out and upside down he doesn’t intend to dissolve the principle of identity for an object, rather he subjects it to a collective play of experience even as “there is no solution, because there is no problem” may still be held valid.
He redefines the method and intent of conceptual work of art. In “the more I die, the lighter I get” series the carved torso, the shape of knot and sack in wood, blades, jackets, lights, heart, the projected words everything retains their character. He doesn’t alter them to a point of dissolution but in combination he elevates those objects, with or without a mechanical motion, to a collective experience as a redefined idea. (7)
Again unlike the conceptual artists, he doesn’t always reassemble found objects, instead he subjects them to a material transformation under his skilful artisans giving them an ironical twist where brittle skeletons become strong metal cast and strong stone carved windows and dented metal cars become brittle wooden carving. This multi layered alteration of contexts becomes more important to his work that the play unleashed does at times become overbearing and at times camouflaged in the observer’s mind as an act of drama.
As Thomas McEvilley quotes Sudashan Shetty in his paper ‘Being Elsewhere’ (8) “ In India” Shetty says “ art is closely connected to the idea of entertainment. Most of my shows are conceived as places of amusement…. There is a gap between the inside of a gallery or museum space and the life outside of it. To overcome this apparent contradiction, I started very early to make big toy-like mechanized pieces and to create a fairground kind of spectacle, to bring people into the gallery space in the guise of entertainment.”It is interesting to note Sudarshan Shetty’s reference to amusement that he uses to achieve this ‘Indian spectacle’ out of his art work.
In his book “After Modern Art 1945-2000”, David Hopkins says, “In 1957 Duchamp delivered an important lecture, ‘The Creative Act’, in which he argued that ‘the work of art is not performed by the artist alone’ and that the spectator’s point of view affects the all important ‘ transubstantiation’ of inert matter into art’ The ritualistic , Catholic overtones here relate interestingly to Etant Donnes, but most important is the strategic belittling of the modernist conception of the art object’s internal self sufficiency in favor of a sense of its dependence on contingent , external factors such as audience participation.(9)
The importance of Shetty’s reference to amusement explained incisively by David Hopkins, a western art essayist! Here is the catch, because Sudarshan Shetty’s “Indianness” does not follow the Indian strictures on art by dictum but only follows the purpose of it.
As Rabindranatha Tagore puts it “ Art is not for justification of “shilpa shastra” but the shastra is for the elucidation of art “ (10) and “ Art is born out of boredom” explains Markandeya muni in Chitrasutram (11), Sudarshan Shetty’s works most often trespass the regimentation of Indian art as it does in the case of conceptual art. As he often puts the influence of “Yaksha Gana”, a Kannada performance art that tells Hindu religious stories where Hindu gods and icons take centre stage. As it is in the case of any other traditional Indian art form, the objective of the performance has religious importance with spiritual overtones but the purpose remains drama, the entertainment. With lavish decoration, ornamentation, supernaturally masked characters, music and percussion it unleashes a spectacle among the audience.
The Wikipedia elaborates amusement as a state of experiencing humorous and usually entertaining events or situations and is associated with enjoyment, happiness, laughter and pleasure. The word amuse is so named from the opposite of “muse” – to learn or to think. In this context, Sudarshan Shetty’s reference to “Indian spectacle with amusement” becomes an important aspect. Things that are small or very large amuse us. So are the mechanical movements and experience it delivers. Amusement parks entertain us with different mechanical movements and the experience. Every mechanical action is repetitive and may be predictable in nature but within its repetition and predictability the meaning gets redefined as the viewer becomes part of the subject. Strangely thereafter the same predictability becomes unpredictable and repetition becomes spontaneity.
The spectacle is unleashed often not through object of art but often by the orientation of the work like the one by Sudarshan Shetty -- a profusely bleeding musical instrument kept on a while table cloth on an art deco round table. For him most often this mechanical motion becomes essential to achieve an effective aura of spectacle to his work. It could be anything like flowing liquid, moving light, oscillating eye balls or wooden tongue in a gramophone - Consanguinity 2003(a); or it could be collapsing and realigning structures- Shift, 2005(b); or it could be a pouncing hammer on a table laid with wine glasses – Party is Elsewhere(2005) (c); or it could be knocking by hammer metal nipples, simple monotonous walk by glass shoes, finger holding movements of prosthetic palms, flow of liquid through glassware and tubes – Eight corners of the world. 2006(d), Changing images through projection, automated Braille machine that types ‘love’, phallus of life-sized dinosaur toy that makes love to a Jaguar- Love, 2006 (e) are few among them. With these movements and objects of art he transforms the space into a spectacle of sculpture or an installation. He decisively breaks the old idiom of “art are things made primarily to be looked at or beheld”(12) to make it a participatory experience, the Indian idea of spectacle with western idea of amusement. From there when its initial spectacle wanes out, depending on the span of attention, the spectator extends to the installation the rudimentary repetition of unending cycle of mechanical movements, that slowly evoke a sense of emptiness.
From that emptiness anyone would instantly recognize an irreconcilable agony and violence the artist is trying to encounter beneath this play of drama. As he puts across in his book “The more I die lighter I get: “The role of art, for me, involves two basic impulses: the urge to play and the urge to transgress- the second of which is only morally permissible in art. I think I share these basic impulses with artists everywhere that the need for art is inseparable from them”(13)
“The city offers me great deal that is engaging and attractive but I am also concerned about the inherent deception in all that it has to offer. This conflict seems to repeatedly find its way into my work, in my choice of idiom and my handling of it. I like the analogy of a dripping combustible liquid tanker in front of my car while I am driving and I have no choice but to follow it. If you happen to walk down the streets of Mumbai things just come to you…”.(14)
These elaborately expressive paragraphs when put together, automatically turns the table for the work of art. As in the case of the one who follows the dripping combustible liquid filled tanker, he subjects the spectator to the deception of sense of security, the biggest anomaly of living by exposing the hidden brutal structures lying beneath the beauty of form and skin.
It shatters the sense of security, the spectator presupposes in front of an art work. For example at his show at Tilton gallery in 2010, where cast dog skeleton with bull’s horn moves on elevated wooden legs, the bronze phallus that mechanically makes love to the book, the sharp knife that cuts the wooden knot to untangle, the carved wooden torso pierced with many knives, the wooden bag precarious on the edge of a table does nothing else. He constantly makes the viewers to encounter the brutal undertones of reality that otherwise remain in a complementary existence.
But at the same time he brings out the structures of the entities out in open with a pinch of fun, like moving skeletal remains because he says “the attempt is not so much to destabilize the viewer- it is more to do with the way I look at the world as naturally as possible.”(15) Here he put the record straight “the tragic isolation of the artistic mind”- what it sees naturally in the world is often not seen by the world and when the artist puts efforts to show it to the world, they get scared”, hence it is an artistic responsibility to make it a spectacle so the world can become part of it without much unsettlement.
It is an interesting argument, a collective representation of art practice- “art lies in artistic responsibility”. So you find the evolution of it in every artistic practice. Artist has the responsibility to respond, alter, correct and modify his work one after another as Kandinski puts forth “Every period of culture produces its own art, which can never be repeated” (16).
In Sudarshan Shetty’s latest exhibition “This too shall pass” at Bhau Daji Lad Museum --where he has effectively catalogued his artistic journey over the years -- has had two works that clearly vindicate this argument. The story narrated through songs and text in an audiovisual room with empty chairs where television is deliberately removed. Another is the fallen Chabutra with blood flowing out and getting crystallized like an emerging huge array of building blocks of development. While one was a sound philosophical take on “imaginations of visual culture”, the other one was a deep political comment - Sudarshan Shetty, the artist at 2010.
1- Gallery SKE Tilton Gallery publication,2010, the more I die, lighter I get P:1 Pg:9
2- Gallery SKE Tilton Gallery publication,2010, the more I die, lighter I get P:5 Pg:9
Gallery SKE Tilton Gallery
publication,2010, the more I die, lighter I get P:6 Pg:9
3- Basil Blackwel publication , 1991 Conceptual art : Art and Language, Charles Harrison P2:pg:47
4-
5- MIT Press paperback edition,1996, Marcel Duchamp-Artist of the century, Edited by:Rudolf E Kunzli & Francis M Numann
6- The more I die, the lighter I get series
7- Thomas McEvilley, Being Elsewhere p:3Pg:10
8- Oxford University Press, 2000 : After Modern Art 1945-2000: David Hopkins P:2:Pg:41
9- Lalith Kala Akademi publication, Man form and art: Indran, P:5 pg:12
10- Chitrasutram
11- Basil Blackwel publication , 1991: Art and Language- Charles Harrison P:1pg:33
12- Gallery SKE Tilton Gallery publication,2010, the more I die, lighter I get p1: Pg219
13- Gallery SKE Tilton Gallery publication,2010, the more I die, lighter I get p1: Pg38
14- Gallery SKE Tilton Gallery publication,2010, the more I die, lighter I get p4: Pg143
15- The spiritual in art: Kandinski:www.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses/Phil of art/kanndinskytext2.htm
