For artist Babu Eshwar Prasad, the TV is a window to an outside world. |
This might just be the longest 20 minutes, I think to myself ,as I make my acquaintance with the slightly built and very reticent Babu Eshwar Prasad. He immediately, and expectedly, rejects the possibility of a walk through his work, and leaves me to decipher context, colour and caprice for myself. |
Against the cool white setting of the Bodhi gallery, Prasad's luminiscent canvases stand defiant. It's amusing to think that Prasad's artistic explorations began with monochrome "" a long period of black-and-white drawings through his post-graduate programme at MS Baroda. Today, colour runs riot through his compositions. |
Prasad spent the greater part of his childhood in a village called Sakleshpur, 22 km outside Bangalore. Curious, then, that his imagery is entirely cosmopolitan. There is, in fact, a distinct preoccupation with urban households. |
Unrelated (yet strangely harmonious) domestic and industrial objects come together in a setting contrived by the artist, not unlike a stage set to receive the drama that accompanies an arriving actor. Except, no actor appears. The canvases are entirely devoid of human participation. |
In "The Room is Empty, the Window is Open", an iron bed with its decorative dhurrie spread, takes centre stage, an open window offers some distraction from a completely inanimate setting, a cut-out on the wall shows part of a junkyard..."I don't see myself getting involved with any figurative art in the perceivable future although I have indulged in it in the past." |
There is something left of the printmaking Prasad studied in art school. Like the repetitive cloud forms reminiscent of Buddhist tangkhas in "Buddha and the bean bag", a work that pays tribute to "TV Buddha", a video installation from the 1970s by Korean artist Nam June Paik. Babu reveals he responds to Zen teachings though he isn't inclined towards theological discussion. |
There are several reference to visual arts... stills from world cinema, homage to famous art, and there is often a television in a corner blaring out inaudibles. In fact, it's a lesser known fact that Prasad is a maturing filmmaker. One of three shorts conceived, filmed and edited by him made it to the Toronto film festival in 2005, and he is raring, if not ready, to make his very first feature-length film. |
"Film offers me the one thing painting cannot "" sound," he says. "Even Edvard Munch's "Scream" doesn't evoke powerful sound though it does powerful emotion." He has tried dealing with sound in his own works titled "What I See, What I Hear" and "Spatial Sounds". |
The television also is his window to the outside world, otherwise minimally represented. It becomes a statement on the stranglehold it has over urban lives. "My images are not pre-conceived, I create the space and then begin filling it," clarifies Babu, of repetitive icons. |
This current showing, "Time Past, Time Present, Time to Come", was meant to be exhibited at Bodhi Art Gallery Singapore, except Prasad expressed a preference to show to his Indian audience, given that he hasn't had a solo showing in five years. |
There isn't a trace of commercial avarice in him. He shows once in three years on average and is not drawn to foreign shores. He doesn't care to take on commissions and would gladly not be acquainted with his collectors except, as he says, "in the age of information it's difficult to escape it". |
In fact, the artist Babu Eshwar Prasad is a bit like the knotted fibreglass bundle that makes up one of two sculptures he's executed for the show. Titled, "The Wrapping", it leaves you wondering: what lies within? |