Experimenter presents Local Time, a solo by Prajakta Potnis on Friday, September 21, 2012. This is Potnis’ first solo in Kolkata.
The notion of time and its passage has always seeped into Potnis’s work, sometimes bordering on an out of control situation, an outburst that is often a result of apathy or neglect. Different time zones exist within a vast nation like India but a common standard time is maintained for political, administrative and possible feelings of national unity. An inherent ambiguity and unstated time difference therefore emerges in our daily lives. Potnis attempts to look at the multiplicity of the idea of time and the gaps that therefore exist between two places. She explores what transpires within these intervals and wonders if our realties shift or distort within these gaps. Time has an inherent need to be accurate. Potnis intervenes with small distortions through her photographs and installations in a way derailing time in its constant pursuit of that perfectness and inhabits the spaces that could exist in the fissures that emerge in Local Time.
Capsule, a photographic series shot inside a refrigerator explores the idea of freezing time and ageing. The refrigerator because of its controlled temperature allows the creation a sterile enclosed space similar to the environment in malls or airports or other places of transit that are zones not affected by the outside, in a sense blocking time out of its calculation, and at the same time adding an eerie familiarity of such sterile-like spaces we encounter in urban cities. A site-specific sculptural installation bears marks of the passage of time, on the walls of the gallery, a reference that has over time evolved in Potnis’ work. A light and alarm clock work seems to make a metaphorical comment on a systemic failure of sorts and a sense of anxiety and suspense within time. Potnis balances her work on the edge of reality and questions the yardsticks we use to measure our bearings.
Prajakta Potnis, (b. 1980), has a B.F.A and M.F.A in painting from the Sir J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai. She has shown at several group exhibitions worldwide including various locations of Indian Highway at Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo (2009-10), Hearning Museum, Denmark (2010) Lyon (2011), MAXXI, Rome (2011) & Ullens Centre, Beijing (2012); Generation in Transition – New Age Art from India, National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2011), Under The Banyan Tree – India Awakens, The Essl Museum f Contemporary Art, Austria (2010). Solo exhibitions include, Porous Walls, The Guild, Mumbai (2008), Membranes & Margins, Gallery FM, Seoul (2008). Potnis was part of the West Heavens Artist Dispatch Residency, Shanghai (2011), recipient of the Sanskriti Award for Arts, (2010) and INLAKS Fine Arts Award (2003-04)