Experimenter presents a group exhibition titled 08:01 at Art Dubai 2021 with works by Ayesha Sultana, Biraaj Dodiya, Prabhakar Pachpute, Praneet Soi & Radhika Khimji employing the lens of distance, ephemerality and memory.
Ayesha Sultana presents a series of paintings of the sky at precise moments of time in the day. Sultana’s practice is an ongoing investigation of drawing and deriving form from her surroundings to create an understanding of space. In these paintings, titled with the time of day, each color swatch frames a fleeting moment of transience, as gradients shift from shadow to light.
Biraaj Dodiya’s paintings are layered with expressionistic brushstrokes depicting nocturnal scenes and reflecting on the balance between a state of wakefulness and lucidity. As with much of her practice, Dodiya refers to moments in time where sequences of events are a blur and not chronological, often taking the form of a lament while introspecting on her own self and personal experiences.
Prabhakar Pachpute’s Feathers Never Die re-imagines and questions the restoration of land and monuments at a moment in time that appears suspended. Continuing his inquiry into labor and resources in which he imagines the future of a post-mined and industrial landscape, Pachpute presents a scene bereft of human presence with abandoned traces of excavation machinery. A pair of wings emerge from a mining pit proposing a force of resilience, a signal for change or even a call to action for revolution.
Praneet Soi has been engaging with the term anamorphosis as a way in which the viewer can see an image from a certain viewpoint. In Mumbai Diptych, Soi looks at the city from the terrace of the Bhau Daji Lad Museum and sketches this perspective out in silverpoint. The painting is a reminder of the artist’s first visit to Mumbai, with the city's skyline embodying a pluralistic and densely urban centre lying within. Juxtaposed within this is the Barringtonia tree from Marine Drive, a motif that the artist has often used, here fleshed out in tones inspired by miniature painting.
Radhika Khimji’s work can be often be seen as being at once a painting, a drawing and a collage; it is also an embroidery and a sculpture. Because of its polarities, a place between several identities emerge. This House Ties Its Ropes Tight presents the viewer with the form of a home layered with interventions of the self, in many ways deconstructing, evading and erasing constructions of our formulated identities of self and space over time.
From the works presented, the viewer is invited to evaluate one’s mode of seeing or contemplating one’s surrounding. From the lens of distance, ephemerality and memory, one is often encountered with a renewed perspective by which to recognize the familiar in the every day.
