Abhilasha Ojha discusses the art of the abstract with Vishaka Apte whose interesting works are currently being showcased in Delhi.
There’s an interesting comment that artist Vishaka Apte makes about her works being showcased at Delhi’s Gallery Art Motif. “When I moved from Mumbai,” she says, “I battled, like everyone else, with space crunch. Closed spaces were an attraction for me and that is reflected in my paintings too. In Bhopal,” where the artist shifted for the sake of her art, “the objects in my paintings started getting scattered comfortably,” Apte says.
One look at her work and you’ll know exactly what she means. There’s a sense of openness in Apte’s work, heightened by the pastel hues in green (“life”), blue (“space”) and greys, never mind the complete absence of bold colours. None of the objects are cluttered and busy, jostling for space; instead, they are always in movement, either travelling into the canvas, or out of it.
That’s the argument extended by the artist who grew up in Mumbai and studied at the JJ School of Fine Arts. Ironically, she says, her early works boasted of full figures and sometimes even bold colours.
“Though the main goal of my work has invariably tilted to show human existence, I realised that in the long run it wasn’t necessary to point it out too obviously,” she says, safely ensconced in her Bhopal studio while work continues to get appreciated at her first solo show in Delhi.
Amrita Varma of Gallery Art Motif feels that Apte’s biggest strength is that her paintings, like those of most artists, are expressions of her soul. “The calmness that she feels within gets reflected in her works,” she says.
On the face of it, her work appears abstract. But that, Apte reasons, isn’t entirely so. “For me the objects have movements,” she insists, while Varma points to a couple of her paintings to reiterate the point. Apte’s Untitled Work X, and Untitled Work XI, both mixed media on canvas, for instance, project only feet instead of a full figure. “Feet signify independence and movement and a deep connection, a rootedness to earth through which everything else can be viewed and understood,” she explains.
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The 42-year-old artist, who was also given the National Award at the 41st national exhibition of contemporary art in 1998, specialises in etching, calligraphy and print-making, techniques that she mastered in Bhopal and which she used liberally to achieve varied textures in her works in the ongoing exhibition. For example, Apte, after drawing subjects in charcoal, pasted rice paper and scratched on the surface randomly to achieve the lines on the surface.
“I do things randomly, nothing is predetermined,” says Apte. Inspired by the works of Prabhakar Kolte (also her teacher at JJ School of Fine Arts), Anupam Sood and the post-Impressionist painters of the West, Apte laughs and says she’s overcome one major artist’s mental block thanks to this exhibition. “When I did prints, I finished a complete work before moving to the next. Oil takes time and I possibly couldn’t wait for a coat of paint to dry and then layer it with something else,” she says.
Apte’s works run into lakhs of rupees and from what Varma says, the feedback has been stupendous. In her view, Apte’s paintings are like a musical symphony. “Her work may project chaos and tension but it’s not aggressive,” she says, adding that objects (which are invariably interconnected) in Apte’s works are beings that are constantly moving either inside or outside of the canvas.
On her part, the artist says that none of her works stems from conscious effort. “I don’t impose myself, nor do I restrict myself when I work, and maybe that’s why I’m comfortable with the end result,” she says.
