last monday - gallery hopping with kaushik and mohua

yesterday kaushik, mohua, mukul and me spent together looking for a camera for kaushik to buy. we did not finally but had a great time over lunch at cafe mysore and at the four art galleries we hopped in the evening. the art though left a lot to be desired. jitish and his sweatopia was cool-ly named, overly finished. skeletons traced over auto-rickshaws and cars could not make animals of the vehicles. and why were they being transformed into animals i could not figure out. the smooth 3d photographs of ruined slum walls seemed to anaestheticise dirt into commodity. but worse were the big black coin and paintings of cute boys with cities locked into their hair showing at bodhi.

riyaz’s photographs in ‘mark him’ at the guild was better but not by much. sportstar like blow ups of the indian football team. chak de art style.

better than all was the kazakhstan artist work at project 88. ‘flying over stereotypes’ it was called and the work ranged from video art to performance art to collage. photographs of the skin of a horse were stitched together to form a landscape, cooking vessels became mountain ranges, borat was being discussed. it was great work that had something to say, unlike, i am sorry to say, their indian counterparts.