Celebrating the humananimal

Everyone from Tyeb Mehta to Husain has used animal forms. A new show explores our mixed feelings for different species, discovers Neha Bhatt

I’m greeted by a fibre-glass sculpture of a middle-aged gnome hugging a frog (the amphibian’s face is strikingly similar to the gnome’s), and three other frogs looking up at the twosome. The sculpture, ‘The year that is ....’, by artist Ved Gupta sets the tone for this exhibition on the human animal — humananimal, if you will — for the connection between the two is as inseparable as the contrasts are stark.

Overlooking Connaught’s Outer Circle in New Delhi, Religare Arts Gallery hosts the show curated by Marta Jakimowicz, on display till April 8. Jakimowicz speaks of animal figures in art that have changed in form with the times — be it “Tyeb Mehta’s minimalist, abstracted split bull of suffering or M F Husain’s horses and elephants exuding sensuous, exuberant energy.” In this exhibition, artists work under “many different thematic and aesthetic foci — from social criticism to conjuring sheer atmosphere,” explains the curator.

 

In its most elemental form, the works, in a pleasant mix of media, brings to the fore the animal — the animal in us and amongst us; the alter ego, a reflection. In a variety of equations, reactions and interpretations, the works of 22 artists — young and veterans — are on display, and the result is certainly eclectic.

If artist Manjunath Kamath’s canvas series titled ‘Discussion over vegetarian dinner’ is audaciously tongue-in-cheek, Arunkumar H G’s ‘Untitled’ series of frames, that outline a cow’s udders, is upfront. The former takes a glance at the “pretenses and pomposity” that people display at formal locations. It’s a humorous display of that intention for sure — a sculptured dog pees unabashedly on a pile of books that lie on a table in charming pink and magenta-coloured canvas.

‘Untitled’, on the other hand, is a series of images of the essential cow, paying homage to the “bovine species that remains irreplaceable in our daily necessities”. The works explore the entangled equations between man and this particular specie — the cow is, at first glance, simplictic and bare, while being heartwarmingly earthy (the artist makes use of materials like earth, cow dung, straw, paraffin wax and butter to achieve this effect). However, the work is likely to also invoke several social and religious interpretations.

The show highlights some of our basic feelings related to animals, human qualities and attitudes that we associate with them — of innocence or craftiness, comfort or fear, as also some strangely subconscious thoughts that involve both a sense of unity and being alien. Most of all, it is our fascination and repulsion with the species that is most stark. Prithpal S Ladi’s work “Our Friends” speaks of the former, a wonderfully crafted collection of glass and metal insects, centipedes, grass hoppers, dragonflies and beetles. These are an exotic lot, resting as if in a garden poised quietly in a corner.

Striking and fantasy-prone is George Martin’s ‘Animated Holocaust’, with a sharply red “new-age satan” perched on a pillar of wheel tyres (installation made of stainless steel, silicon, fibreglass, automobile colour, holograms, foam, cloth) that represents the violent side of human animalism, with two toy airplanes in a metaphorical collusion.

For the reason that each artist’s medium is strikingly different, one doesn’t seem to tire of the theme, for it isn’t as if the age-old man-animal relationship has not been explored at length before. However, it is a subject that also obviously continues to incite, fascinate and intrigue in ever changing dimensions, expressed through “contemporary aesthetic means”. The mixed media — ranging from acrylic on canvas, painted fibreglass, wooden sculptures to leather installations and watercolours on handmade paper comes as a bonus.