Experimenter presents four solo positions by Ayesha Sultana, Julien Segard, Krishna Reddy, and Rathin Barman at the Ballygunge Place space. The architecture of Experimenter – Ballygunge Place lends possibilities of viewing disparate exhibitions together.
Krishna Reddy | In Search of Simultaneity
Simultaneity may not be an absolute relation between events; what is simultaneous in one frame of reference will not necessarily be simultaneous in another. Unlike in physics which is restricted by laws governed by mathematics where the attainment of absolute simultaneity can only be a theoretical proposition, Reddy’s practice unbound by the unyielding parameters of science, truly perfected a simultaneous balance between technique, philosophy and vision.
Krishna Reddy’s seven-decade long practice has been in several ways a quest in simultaneity not only in pursuit of form, medium and technique but also in expanding philosophy and in ways of seeing. The solo project at Experimenter presents Reddy’s exceptionally multidimensional and layered artistic oeuvre as a way of life that incorporated a daily immersion in drawing, printmaking and sculpture, which remained true to exploring simultaneous relationships between multiple disciplines being at play at the same time.
Julien Segard | Dark Was The Night
All the colours of darkness and paradox in its myriad manifestations is central in Julien Segard’s monumental work, Dark Was the Night, engulfing the entire room of the space it is exhibited in. In the layered folds of the work, lies the betrayal of darkness disguised as light, where what is apparent is equally akin to what is not. The work, installed in folds like a curtain, questions the paradoxical nature of lightness and weight, inside and outside, private and public, where the dimly lit enclosed room acts as a veil for isolation but also allows for permeation and contemplation. Materially too, it confronts paradoxes with a dense foundation in charcoal, juxtaposed with the brilliant delicateness of gold paint. The explosion, seemingly resembled in Dark Was the Night, is as much about the weight and violence of the combustion it depicts as it is about the lightness of release and freedom.
Ayesha Sultana | Pulse
Although space and form is central to Ayesha Sultana’s practice, the works in the project by Sultana anchor themselves in pulse. In medicine, a pulse represents the tactile measurement of the cardiac cycle which is inherently repetitive in nature; yet outside the constricting definitions of medicine, a pulse occupies space, time and form, and the only property that carries forward from its primeval definition is repetition.
Repetition is fundamental to Sultana, whether in mark-making, folding or expanding and becomes an embodied experience. A range of mediums and materials also co-exist in the presentation. Gouache drawings that decipher sonic readings; sculptures in brass and wood that represent three-dimensional form that falling liquids may have; a reverse canvas painting, pleated and turned over to conceal than reveal, Sultana explores the understanding of material and process and how they manifest in the expression of form.
Rathin Barman | Dimensional Distortion
Rathin Barman’s practice places architecture as a nodal axis and uses other disciplines in conjunction to expand from that plane yet keeping a continuous increasing or decreasing distance from the centrality of architecture that manifests as a form of expression. Simultaneity and dimensional distortion, therefore lies at the crux of Barman’s approach to the built environment.
Through a series of sculptures that employ materials such as concrete, metal, reinforced concrete board and brass, Barman carves a space between the physical, narrative and aspirational in his project. An imposing concrete wall sculpture inlaid with brass forms a drawing of a home culled from interviewing families that have occupied old homes for decades, sometimes reconstructed from visits to these sites over years and at times expanded from recollecting structures that once existed. Interspersed are three-dimensional reinforced concrete board works that are made from narrative aspirations of people who strive to move into other modular forms of housing and leave behind a past grandeur of a large structure of co-habitation. For Barman, architecture is anthropology, history, poetry and psychology operating at the same time.
Barman’s project functions like an open loop almost akin to a spiral – conceptually, visually and materially viewed like a curve which emanates from a single point of entry into the curve, yet by simultaneously adopting other disciplines, it moves farther away as it revolves around that initial point of entry. At the same time, the relative spirality of his approach to the built environment allows Barman the possibility to collapse his work back to that starting central point of architecture.
