another subcontinent is proud to present an exhibition of selected art by ranbir kaleka. when the exhibition opens this thread will be opened for the purpose of discussing it. ranbir will stop by to participate in our discussion and to respond to questions.

check back soon for the link to the exhibition and for the discussion to open!

our homesite relaunch is now official and this topic is open for discussion!

see here to get a sense of what the excitement is all about and to view the kaleka exhibition.

for those coming here directly from the discussion links on the exhibition: you do not have to join another subcontinent to read the discussion; however, in order to post comments or questions you will have to become a member.

dear ranbir and arnab,
i have just scrolled through the galleries and looked at the exhibitiion--
first off, arnab the exhibition page is beautiful, i love it. it looks really nice and is well organized and i love the colors and art.
but most important, i think the art is really wonderful -- i especially loved Woman with Flying Insect and Dreaming Hunter--the former is really a compelling image, a portrait you can't take your eyes off of, and it reminds me a bit of Frida Kahlo's work and the latter is just really really interesting, i liked most of all the subject of the painting and how it's as if he's swimming or floating through the image.
wonderful updates to the site arnab and others,
all best,
maureen.

Yes, I liked the exibition as well. A picture is worth a thousand words and all that :-)

Congratulations on the new look of the front page.

Pratibha
(who still likes the images of the world that the words can conjure up!)

Like Maureen I'm also drawn to Woman with Flying Insect, which has a haunting quality & layering of color that reference the image of a Kokoshka painting that has been residing in my mind for years -- though with an entirely different palette. It's not that I see the artist referencing Kokoshka, but that my own mental card file collates that way, to be clear. OK maybe not so clear.

But my question to Ranbir is about the variety of media of the displayed works. I'm intrigued by all the (seemingly) simutaneous endeavors that go beyond paint and wonder if its possible to describe how you direct your creative energy towards one or another. Meaning, I suppose, does a certain technique invite you to discover the meaning or imagery that the viewer encounters as finished work -- to come dance with it, in a way; or does the germinating idea or impulse "ask" for a particular medium or technique?

cj

hello all,

embarrassed to say that this is my first post given that arnab and I are in a cohabiting situation. either my lack of involvement shows that the marriage is in trouble or that it is in an ideal state.

in actuality i am not active on the internet, other than for shopping purposes, and this may be my first post ever on any site! that may shock some of you.

i guess i'm writing because like some of you i find ranbir's work quite moving. i was extremely impressed that the site was able to host an artist of his caliber.

there are many pieces that i find interesting, but since many of you noted Woman with Flying Insect, I thought I'd put my two cents in about it. i noticed that there are people depicted in some of the paintings as either sleeping or dreaming, evident most obviously in the way that they have their eyes closed. two such paintings would be The Convert and Dreaming Hunter. juxtaposing such sleeping/dreaming figures with the woman with the insect, i am struck by the way in which the sleeping figures seem much more active, involved with their world and surroundings, and possessed with more possibilities than this woman whose eyes are conversly wide open. in fact not only is she rigid and static, she doesn't seem aware of her world; she doesn't seem to notice the insect. hence the conjunction in the title Woman and the Insect seems to suggest separation more than connection. what i gather from this is the possbilities in dream state vs. real life that also go back to what arnab wrote about in his introduction. somehow the paintings suggest that an exploration of subconsciousness, or you might want to call it imagination or even spirituality, makes you more awake than a person who is literally awake in the world. along these lines Cobbler also speaks to me as representative of a man who is involved with the everyday activity of his job, sort of boxed in, entrapped in his tiny studio, while all of these otherworldly figures abound at the edge of his world. going back to seejay's comment about multimdedia format, in the case of Cobbler, the superimposed images work well to depict the various levels of our world, existence, that go beyond the simple layer of the cobbler, or his studio.

one piece that i'm interested in hearing others' ideas about is Boy Without Reflection. I wonder why the reflections of the others are multiple (in threes) and what the implication of being without a reflection may be. it may suggest some sort of a primal existence but the animals with reflections seem more primal than he is...

This post has been edited by sunhee: Dec 4 2004, 06:07 AM

Mr. Kaleka:

I like very much "Man with Cockerel" and "Cobbler." Can't help but note that birds (and animals) feature prominently in your work: sometimes the humans take centre stage (as in "Man with cockerel"); sometimes the other creatures are the main focus (as in "Cobbler").

Your recent work (that's portayed here) is very different (fuller, richer) from the pieces showcased in the Herwitz collection (at Gallery ArtsIndia) in NY. Was the style change deliberate?

(Warning: following question likely to reveal ignorance)--How did you assemble "Cobbler"?

I should express my frustration and disappointment at having to see a rather small representation of "Cobbler" on my computer screen. I should love to see it close up. Where does the original hang?

Hi Sunhee,

Nice to hear from you -- and thanks for the interesting observations about the paintings -- especially the asleep/awake paradox you pointed out.

Actually, I think its those staring-at-what-we do-not-see eyes in the Woman with Flying Insect that are one of its compelling aspects. I read them as remembering, but they could be focused almost any inward place. They draw me in to wonder what secret screen she is viewing, so, vis a vis the dreaming actors and the waking dreamer its that onion thing again -- at which level do we freeze frame the perception. I suppose that I'm suggesting there could be a contemplative aspect to the woman as she is depicted.

I also love The Cobbler, though lament along with Roshna that I can't see it in its proper dimensions. I'm less clear on exactly what it is that draws me in, though part of it is the surprise -- and the clarity of color, which has a physical effect on me.

In that way, my personal response to visual art is similar to my response to music and poetry -- I can't always say exactly what it is that sneaks in behind my everyday mind and moves me, rather I feel the effects almost at a cellular level. Which doth not stimulating conversation make, I fear.

cj

Dear Maureen,

I love Frida Kahlo's work. Her self Portraits are haunting ,...very powerful. When I do heads, I try to make the face particular and at the same time general. What I am trying to say is that every face, how so ever ordinary looking, has a distinctive character and mark of individuality. I try not to make an easily readable face as we are not easily definable.

Looking at a face for a long time can be a humanising experience, some aspect of the face invariably begins to look attractive,.. there are no ugly faces.

There are two things I am doing while painting a face...I try not to fix it but bring ambiguity to it and then bring intensity to its presence.

In Dreaming Hunter, I tried to give the body a 'corporal weight' and yet make it float. The body and face are androgynous.

Ranbir

Dear Pratibha,

I am pleased to hear you like the exhibition.
We must as well all continue to delight in the world conjured by words and music.

Ranbir

Dear CJ,

I like Kokoshka, his paintings of people are very intense...You are right about the layering of colour, this is what I have enjoyed doing in some of my works. His handling of brush strokes is expressionistic, mine by comparison is more 'studied'....By this I do not imply that any one way is better than the other.

An image/idea/event enters the imagination and is visualised in the mind's eye originally in its entirety, that is, with its form/dimension/vocabulary/medium/technique.

Sometimes the same idea may be tried out in different media later, each time altering its 'feel'.

Ranbir

Dear Sunhee,

Enjoyed reading your response to my work....

Just a word on, 'Boy without Reflection',..: the title is also a play on the word 'Reflection'..as in 'thought/deliberation.'

Its a large painting ,(10 foot high)...some of the details are hard to locate...there are mini-scenes of destruction...

Would you like me to post any published reviews of the painting!!!

Ranbir

ranbir, we have to be careful about copyright and fair-use. i believe the guidelines say 100 words is fair game--so excerpts would be fine. the best way, if possible, would be to link to the reviews.

Dear Roshna,

Your observation is correct about birds and animals...they work as 'open metaphors'.

Some of the work in the Herwitz collection is about 30 years old...there is work from the 80sas well. It is a natural evolution.

The "Cobbler" is 40" in height. It is a limited edition. Its in private collections in India and Australia.

Ranbir

Mr. Kaleka,

I'll take my answer to "ignorant question" (in previous post) from this:

Thanks!

Dear CJ,

Your response is so 'fruitful' as has been Sunhee's.
While creating a work, I , as well as most artists, unless the work is 'conceptual', 'feel' a work, and it is the 'feeling' which contains the 'meaning' of the work. We do not try to articulate it in precise words which can only 'reduce' the work and may lead us to fixing it as an "illustration an idea".

Most of us create the work in the same mode in which you respond to it....as you said 'at a cellular level'..This allows for multiple readings of a single work.

Ranbir

Sorry Roshna,...I did not reply yesterday to your query: How did I assemble "cobbler".
I photographed the cobbler who lives down our street in his work-shack...took a photo of the sky and the sea...collected a few images of birds...fed these all into the computer, worked in Photoshop, ..took the cd to a photo-lab and had the image printed on metallic paper.

Ranbir

Hi Ranbir, many thanks to you and Arnab (and others) for making all this available.

Pardon any ignorance on my park, but I'm a bit puzzled: I'm not sure I understand what the woman above the cobbler is there for in The Cobbler, it's hard to make out what the image is supposed to be. Could I ask where you drew the images of the women you used from?

Also, Man with Bhutta has a very striking thumbnail. But I'm not at all sure what to make of the image at large, are the shaped sections of the board on the right intended to give a sense of the man being boxed in by chaos but finding some relief and sustenance in his same old bhutta he's been eating since childhood? Or something?

Armagod, this is the chief downside to viewing art that's had to be shrunk. I noticed only after many viewings (on my small screen), that they are afloat in shallow waters (all except the fixed-gaze pheasant, who is grounded, and the long-tailed flying bird, who appears to be seeking pheasant's attention).

Were we to see the original work (3' +), the relationship between different subjects might become more apparent. But even then, your read might be very different from mine.

The upside of this arrangement is that we get the (rare) opportunity to ask the artist to interpret his work. I'll wait for his answers to your queries. . .

Dear Armagod,

The woman above the cobbler is a tribal, ( found the image in an old picture framer's shop in a village in Delhi (Kotla). The cobbler has a golden thread running from his hands to the high heeled shoes of a 'fantasy woman'...in a later version the woman is an androgynous figure. I had hired a model for this figure to shoot in high heels, but she fell ill on the day of the shoot...I finally heavily manipulated the 'found image' of an Indian woman in photo shop.

Your observations may have been the same, were you to see the original...I am happy with your reading...In the kind of work I do, which is not, for example, agitprop, or a work with an agenda, no interpretation is 'wrong'. You must feel comfortably confident with what ever you locate in the work.

Ranbir

Dear Roshna,

I certainly find nothing 'ignorant' in your query.

Ranbir

Dear Roshna,

To me 'darkness' of 'ignorance' would be a total inability to respond to any art form, be that of the 'word', 'sound' or 'image'.

Technique and method are secondary, except in those cases where the 'process' of 'making/creating' a piece is the 'meaning' of the 'work' and the end product is just the ' by product'.


Ranbir

Thanks for patiently and graciously answering the questions, Ranbir!

ranbir,

could i ask you to elaborate on these exceptions? would you say any of the pieces in "the waking world" fall into that category?

arnab

Some art presents a record of process, some presents a totalizing, complete work. One example would be Yves Klein's body paintings, or anthropometries, Klein wanted to record the body's physical energy. In creating his anthropometries, Klein used the human body as a "living paint brush." Bathing his models in his signature International Klein Blue paint (patented by the artist), he directed them to press and drag their bodies across paper and canvas, leaving impressions of IKB paint. The resulting images are not only likenesses of the models but also represent their temporary physical presence. In this example the process is 'crucial', but at the
same time the work is 'complete' : this is what hangs in museums.

Other examples would be from performance art, where the 'remains' of the event are signed by the artist.

None of my pieces fall into this category.

Some times the term 'process is more important' is loosly applied to expressionistic work as well.

Ranbir

Dear Arnab,

'...... but at the same time the work is 'complete' : this is what hangs in museums.'

By this I meant that the work that privileges the process also finds a place in meusums and galleries.

I agree with you, cj, that the woman seems to remember/see something that we do not see; this painting in that way may function as a window to the more dreamy scenes in other paintings. I just think, though, that the addition of the insect adds a dimension of separation between the reality of the woman as depicted and the reality of the other world (memory, imagination) that she also may exist in. The effect is somewhat different from Cobbler, which brings together multiple worlds: the banal and the fantastic.

Sun Hee

Dear Ranbir,

I was also thinking about this very double meaning of reflection. On one level being without thought doesn't seem to be a desirable state; reflection allows us to make sense/meaning of things. On another level, reflection may suggest a particular type of mental activity, one that involves strict rationality and empirical reasoning. Even at another level, reflection may suggest an imaginative activity, one that may go beyond the world of rationality; contemplating a memory would be an example of this. Given these possibilities of reflection/thought, I wonder what reflection in the other sense suggests. What we know is that every living person has a reflection; so does this make the boy a fantastic character? However, the actual reflections in the painting are not 1-to-1 reflections that occur in our world. If the suggestion here is that reflections in reality are distortions, is it preferable to be without reflections? But then again, since to exist in reality is to reflect does this boy represent some desired state of pre-culture? Also, in regards to the mini-scenes of destruction--if lack of reflection/thought results in chaos, is having reflection/thought/distortion preferable to not having them at all?

As you can see, I don't have a concrete reading of this painting. But I'm sure it's clear that I find it interesting.

Also, I am interested in reading reviews, especially of Boy Without Reflection. If you aren't allowed to post it, maybe there is a web address that directs us to it? Thanks.

Sun Hee

Dear Sun Hee,

I enjoyed your reflection on 'reflection' immensely.

one way, I believe, to go about looking at painting is to say, " If a painting is not literal than the title is not literal either".

..but as this is one of my more literal paintings, one possible reading could suggest that the absence of boy's reflection means his reduced 'ability', as if he were absent, where as multiple reflections can mean a forceful presence.

I am posting some 'Boy without Reflection reviews' to Arnab, so he can put them up in the appropriate place.

In the meantime I will try to fill in the lost details in the small reproduction.

Here are some of the details which may not be very clear or totally indiscernible....this was not a sharp picture anyway:

a) Family of lizards (with human heads) escaping in the left lower corner. The female has a baby on her back.

broken bridge near the smaller dog's visible front leg.

c) Two train carriages, one half-submerged near the smaller dog's reflections.

d)Bird falling in the upper right , as if shot out of the sky. There are nest twigs and other objects afloat in the sky.

e) Things(one looks like a bloated dead body) afloat in murky water in the right bottom corner, including a crumbled building (with a dome) near the boy's feet.

f) There are also bird droppings painted gold and copper (look like shit) on the actual surface of the canvas.


PS. The skeletal whites on the dog are in thick impasto.

Regards,

Ranbir

dear Mr. Kaleka,
it was a very interesting experience to walk through your paintings on the computer, particularly the melding of the real and the unreal, the dream-like and the waking world. to me, some paitings make apparent all sorts of demons and menacing fears usually tucked away in recesses of the mind. the bright light reflected on the faces adds another kind of reflection to the paintings, exposing the subjects even more as in the man threading a needle. there is quite a lot of sexual imagery too of course, i see it even in the installation with the man and the cockerel, but maybe i am way off.

i also enjoyed reading your responses to the posts made earlier. would love to hear more names of artists whose work has inspired you over the years. is there one whose colors in particular intrigued you?

good luck with all your work!
amna