Watch this space

At an exhibition, three artists attempt to play around with the idea of physical space and the fight for it

For artist Midhun Gopi, emotionality and memory are inseparable to our existence. So, he finds a way to weave them into his works. If you walk into Byculla's Nine Fish Art Gallery, you'll notice panels with multiple paintings that Gopi has worked on in the past two years. They stand out due to the blood red patches — watercolour and acrylic on rice paper that he has sourced from Santiniketan and Gangtok. But the exhibition titled Mutant Spaces, in association with Dot Line Space curated by Gourmoni Das, and comprising the work of three artists Ananda Krishnan, Shahanshah Mittal and Gopi has much more to offer, in terms of medium, technique, and how each artist perceives space.

Midhun Gopi

While Krishnan uses tropes of cartography to formulate his works, Mittal uses collages as a medium to represent a chaotic world. Space or rather the battle for it, is aptly portrayed in Krishnan's Raid of Mother Earth with a ship docked into a woman's womb. A piece titled Travel Diaries to Home by Gopi was inspired by the news of Devamata 2 — a missing boat carrying migrants from Delhi's Ambedkar Colony, heading for the Australian Coast. "I am trying to create a space filled with various forms like landscape elements, common mundane objects, primary forests and archetypal images," the artist, who hails from Kerala and studied in Hyderabad, tells us.

(From Left to right ) Raid of Mother Earth by Ananda Krishnan (watercolour on tea washed paper); Shahanshah Mittal's mixed media paper collage on mount paper

A central element to the exhibition is the process of layering, as Gopi explains, "I try to share with the commonness in nature, transcendental visual experience of a subjective daily reality and the momentary strangeness it evokes."

Artwork by Ananda Krishnan (oil on canvas)

Till: July 21, 10.30 am to 7.30 pm
At: Nine Fish Art Gallery, The New Great Eastern Mills, Byculla.
Call: 8655042300

Catch up on all the latest Crime, National, International and Hatke news here. Also, download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get the latest updates

"Exciting news! Mid-day is now on WhatsApp Channels Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!