If you’re in the vicinity of the New Friends Colony community centre any day between August 19 and 26, drop in at Gallery Espace for a unique art experience. Manjunath Kamath, the 37-year-old Delhi-based artist, will be painting “live” — no, not on canvas, but on the walls of the 2,000 sq ft, split-level gallery, and perhaps, he threatens, even its ceilings and floor.
It’s an exercise, says the artist who is best known for his large paintings depicting the surreal underpinnings of everyday life, but also does installations, digital prints and videos, in elucidating the process of art creation for the general public. Kamath claims he has no idea what he will be painting, rather sketching with water-based colours and marker; it could be something from his subconscious, or it could be something that has arisen from his interactions with the people who walk in.
“Live painting” is, of course, not new. M F Husain does it as a form of exhibitionism, while others like Nikhil Chopra do it as a species of performance art. But where Kamath improvises is in painting directly on the walls. This again has a long tradition in India — ranging from the Ajanta caves to Kerala murals,Warli and the delicate Kavi art, a tradition that Kamath artist is aware of and claims to be inspired by.
Painting on the walls is something Kamath claims to do compulsively. The walls of his studio in Hauz Khas are covered with doodles, which are white-washed every few months, but come back soon after. “I went back to my village [Bantwal, near Mangalore] recently and found that the cowshed still has some of drawings I had made as a boy.” Only his home, Kamath says, is bare, without even paintings on the wall.
But the problem with painting on the wall is that, inevitably, some day that wall will have to be white-washed. As Gallery Espace will be after September 4, when Kamath’s show ends. “Nothing will remain, except photographs,” says Kamath without a hint of regret. In fact, this is one of the prime objects of the project — not to create a saleable commodity at the end of his efforts. “One should just come and share the moment of an artist’s creativity,” he says. Now where does that leave the buyers?
