The shape of abstraction
Heidi Fichtner’s latest exhibit expands the visual inventory of abstract art by focusing on shapes
Artists whose works are grounded in a dialogue with formal and minimal concerns is not a new occurrence, and in fact abstraction has been present throughout the ages. And with the current generation of artists returning to exploring formal concerns in the context of today’s content-driven conceptual art, curator Heidi Fichtner couldn’t ask for anything more. In fact, it got her to put together Form & Phenomenon, an exhibition which brings together art works whose reduced formal language belies a wide scope of underlying interests.
The show essentially sees two themes at play — one of an interest in abstract and formal visual languages and the other of the artists’ engagement with industrial or mundane materials and the element of process, which informs the development of their work. The exhibition neither attempts to make a grand summary of these positions, nor does it place them within a particular historical narrative, instead it tries to uncover the intent and trajectory of various artists.
Coming from disparate conceptual backgrounds, the nine artists of South East Asian diaspora, Asim Waqif, Gyan Panchal, Hemali Bhuta, Iqra Tanveer, Jaret Vadera, Nivedita Deshpande, Rana Begum, Sandeep Mukherjee and Huma Mulji explore their ties to the abstract art movement using a variety of media. “We decided to include a wide range of artists to illustrate the fact that there is no simple answer to the question of how contemporary artists are responding to formal concerns today,” Fichtner states.
So, some of the works are very much rooted in the material object such as Rana Begum’s sculptures which draw inspiration from the urban spirit environment; others are more process based such as Hemali Bhuta’s drawings, which are inspired by Indian philosophy as well as ancient geometry to make a series of works that deal with transitory spaces and the subtle shifts that constantly occur in them and Gyan Panchal’s sculptures, which see a synergy between synthetic and natural materials.
The exhibition represents an active engagement with the topic of minimal forms, materiality, and their intersection in contemporary art production. “While the works emerge out of different kinds of practices and art historical trajectories, they are brought together here in their common use of abstract, minimal visual languages to convey perceptual shifts and transformations,” Fichtner sums up.
NIRALI DIXIT-HATHI
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