A Baroda-based artist's debut solo reconstructs cities with people of all types merged with elements like board games, conveyor belts and calendars
While you may expect a sense of stillness in Schön Mendes' debut solo, Cameos Of A City — considering the artist was born and brought up in the susegaad environs of Goa — the 28-year-old throws you off with bustling panoramas of urban landscape filled with chaotic chronicles of inhabitants and their interactions.
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A work featuring a board game
"Though my work is centered around the city, it is not specific to a particular one but contains echoes of places I have lived in, namely, Goa, Bombay and Baroda," he says.
Though art was a childhood hobby, Mendes went on to study mass media at St Xavier's College in Goa before moving to Mumbai for a stint as an assistant reality producer for a TV show. Later, he studied art under tutelage of artists Rekha Rodwittiya and Surendran Nair in Baroda, where he continues to live and work. He recounts, "I developed my visual language and articulation as an artist during the three years of study and the subsequent four years as an artist-in-residence at The Collective Studio, Baroda." Hosted by Sakshi Gallery (where Mendes has also participated in various group shows), the exhibits include nine large acrylics on canvas along with 10 smaller works.
Excerpts from an interview:
The day and night life of a city
How did Cameos Of A City come about?
The idea emerged two years back, while leafing through an old sketchbook containing drawings I had done three years before. They were bursting with conversations, smells, hues, tastes and sounds encapsulated and stored in the form of lines. Inspired, I worked on a series of paintings. Each work has a protagonist, who gives you a glimpse of his/her life through the painting. The city and interweaving its diverse narratives together has always fascinated me but the most important are the people who comprise the city. Through the works, I attempt to give the viewer glimpses of the various aspects of the city reflected in the people.
What kind of observations have made it to the works?
I often go out and draw. On one such drawing trip, I visited a factory, which was the take-off point for one of my works. I have used a door to symbolise the two sides of life in a city — night and day. Surrounding the visual is a conveyor belt with various manufactured objects, which move around the city in a never-ending motion. This represents how the city has come to resemble a factory, where life is mechanical and bound by routine. In another work, the central element is the setting of a barber's shop, where one often hears rather bizarre or random conversations from people waiting to get a haircut.
Mendes' work with a bodybuilder as protagonist
What was the idea behind merging elements like a calendar and a game into the works?
Many of my works depict scenes that are populated with architectural elements, vehicles and other elements one comes across in a city. This is symbolic of layers. For instance, the image of the gym enthusiast against the backdrop of a calendar, with religious symbols representing each month, talks of bodybuilding and the cult following that it boasts of. The painting with the board game harks back to my childhood and the kind of games I played back then. It also talks about the similarities between a game and life in the modern Indian city.
From September 8 (6.30 pm to 9 pm) to October 8
Time 11 am to 6 pm (except Sundays and public holidays)
At Sakshi Gallery, 6/19, Grants Building, second floor, Arthur Bunder Road, Colaba.
Call 66103424
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