VISIBLE INVISIBLE ALWAR BALASUBRAMANIAM

Alwar Balasubramaniam’s extremely tactile work – A FASCINATING MIX OF CONCEPTUAL IDEATION AND

INNOVATIVE USE OF MATERIAL – is delicate to the point of being ethereal. White predominates within a precise

and controlled use of subdued monochromes.

Trained in printmaking and painting, but a self-taught sculptor, Balasubramaniam possesses an unusual facility

with material. He uses it to evoke illusions so fascinating that they could easily be referred to as meditations on

the effects of time, space and light on the materiality of objects. Time is also an active ingredient in many works,

wherein the artist harnesses it to reference temporality versus impermanence. He uses fragile constructs as a

device with which to calm the mind of the viewer and to allow for pause.

Driven by quiet but palpable spiritual concerns, Balasubramaniam’s work focuses on the interconnectedness of

matter. His is a quest not just for singular epiphanies, but for a larger awakening.

AM: Can we begin by retracing your journey as an artist? AB: After my schooling I decided to join the Government College of Arts, Chennai, but I didn’t get a seat for two years. So I decided to work, earn money and support myself so as to be able to paint. A year later, I joined a screen-printing factory – this was my introduction to industrial printing. The third time around, I got into the college. I began painting and drawing and specialized in printmaking. My experience with industrial printing helped me a great deal. Following college, for almost fi ve years I made prints. But all along I questioned the way I worked, and I didn’t work for almost a year. Instead, I thought about ways to approach art. From this point onwards, my work was referred to as sculpture or mixed media or installation.

AM: So medium and form didn’t become limitations… AB: Exactly…. The year in which I didn’t make any work was akin to a journey without traces. If you leave footprints, people can see that you have walked, but if they can’t see the traces then they assume that you haven’t walked at all. I realized that science has more to do with physical existence, and spirituality with invisible existence. And art is something which is in between. AM: Much of your work was/is about...? AB: It’s about perception and reality. For example, I made a work called, When I Made a Pond, It Became a Mountain, in which, while making a negative space, the positive space came into being. I am interested in questioning limitations that impede the understanding of reality. It’s about everyday experience and preconceived patterns. AM: As if to say that things are not quite what they seem… AB: Yes. If we can shift them for a second or even one thousandth of a minute, it allows for different possibilities, for one to be able to look at the alternatives. AM: So you cause a shift in perception…these illusions, so to speak, were made using plaster? AB: Fibreglass, plaster and casts from body parts…. That’s how it began – it was an attempt at reducing the gap between work as an artist, and the life that I live. The cast remains as proof. It creates an illusion in the physical space; the effort is almost like capturing a frozen moment of a three-dimensional life. From 2004 on, I began wondering whether it is possible to look at reality the way it is…I made a work called Light Makes Dark, with soot taken from a lamp. We think light only gives light, but I started seeing that it gives darkness too. I started capturing traces again, but from energy…some works were an attempt to use energy – candle-light, blowtorch, sunlight – as a medium to capture time.

My friends would ask me why my work was not about social or political issues. My work is about basic human inquiries – you don’t see the connection immediately, because there is an assumption that only the direct and the physical

Light Makes Dark, acrylic, oil, soot on canvas, in the artist’s frame, 40.75 x 21”,

are obvious and relevant. 2004. Private collection, New York AM: The play with materials is also about altering perceptions, where one thinks that it’s heavy, but actually it’s not, and so on… AB: We try to understand everything through our limitations. If we were aware of this, the

possibilities of understanding the altered perceptions and reality are higher. AM: Is there an interest in optics or the science of things? AB: No. Most of the time critics review my work and refer to the high degree of technical skill and the fact that I do draw from various disciplines. But I can’t relate to what they say because technique is the least of my priorities. It’s simply a means to an end. AM: You’ve made a series of what might be termed ephemeral works… AB: I’ve used a chemical crystal to cast some works – the form evaporates and vanishes, raising questions about permanence, gravity, time etc. It also goes from a fi gurative form to abstract to nothing over a few months. If they call it sculpture, in the end it will not be sculpture; if they call it visible, it’s not going to visible; if they call it fi gurative, it’s not going to be fi gurative… AM: Is there a subversive vein in all this? AB: No, I am interested in making the viewer look at things in a conscious way. Visual art is not just

INDIA 20 visual. Still, my intention is not to tease. I see it as

rainfall in a container. AM: It must have required considerable technical experimentation to arrive at these works… AB: During the last few years I was interested in capturing invisible traces, but somehow I couldn’t fi nd a way to do it. So I was working with the visible, capturing traces from the body etc. One day, I was changing the air-freshener in the bathroom and I observed the material used… later, I used the same material for my work.

My mother saw a bust I’d made and said, ‘Oh, it’s so sad,’ because she felt as if the likeness of her son was evaporating into the air. When the neck broke, the head fell off the pedestal…. I, on the other hand, thought of it as the bust escaping the confi nes of its limited space and merging with the larger space. So the same event was viewed differently.

AM: It’s a bit like sculpting presence out of absence and vice versa… AB: True. The work Emerging Angel evoked an

Untitled (casts from self); left: sand, fi breglass; right: evaporating compound, 18 x 20 x 24” each, 2004

illusion that it was created from nothing. On the fi rst day of the exhibition there was a symbolic and organic larva-like form in an acrylic container. This took about a month to dissolve and for another sculpture to emerge from inside. The inner sculpture was made of fi bre resin, the outer one of evaporating compound. Since the colour is the same, it seems as though it’s changing from one form to another. I sculpt what’s around me and out of what’s around me. I also made a few works of space in between forms and the surface on which its shadow falls.

AM: Where do you locate yourself at this particular moment? AB: I’m occupied with some questions; that’s one reason I took a break.

AM: So that things resolve themselves… AB: Things happen when you stop trying to make them happen.

AM: There is an intense fi nesse in the way you work. Despite what you say and the way you explain it, material does assume an important quality. AB: Yes, but as I said, it’s not one or the other; it’s the relationship between things – the effect of time and space on matter – that brings about the whole reaction. When I’m in the process of making, technique is simply a means to achieve my purpose.

AM: I know that you really don’t like putting yourself into a bracket, so to speak, but would you dwell a little bit on where the ideas come from, the concerns and preoccupations and infl uences? AB: They are all from events of daily life.

AM: Have your concerns remained static or have there been shifts? AB: If you noticed…in the beginning my work was about traces, now I’m standing on the other side, capturing the invisible. It’s almost the opposite of what I was doing six years ago.

AM: Do you make notations or do you draw, sketch and write prior to the creation of a work? AB: There is no formula. Sometimes I make sketches, but not always. AM: Would you like to articulate some pertinent thoughts about your own work? AB: No, I don’t feel the need to.

AM: Is there any religious practice that you follow? AB: I practised religion until I was 15 years old. Then I began seeing the difference between spirituality and religion. Religion can exist only with divisions.

AM: There is an androgynous quality in your work, as though you don’t want to assert the maleness or femaleness of things. AB: ‘Neutral’ is a better word. I would say I am a part of the whole thread bundle, I am not the thread bundle; I am just a small element of the thread bundle. If I want to make a small circle and state things such as I am male, Indian, Tamilian, it’ll never work. I like the fact that I am part of a large space…. In my late 20s, I made a few works which seemed to refer to male and female as negative and positive forms, but it was not intended to be that way.

AM: How do you respond to international expectations and responses to your work? AB: That’s very interesting. In India, people think my art recalls that of certain Western artists. And in the West, they look at it as stemming from an Indian sensibility, so I guess it’s defi ned by the baggage that people carry. For many people, the skin of the work is the work itself – they don’t really enter it.

Born in Tamil Nadu, India in 1971, ALWAR BALASUBRAMANIAM holds a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the College of Arts, Chennai, India. He studied printmaking at EPW Edinburgh, Scotland in 1997 and at the Universitat fur Angewandte Kunst Wien in Austria in 1999. He has received several international awards, including the Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship and the UNESCO Bursary. In 2001, he received the Kunstlerdorf Fellowship in Germany and Fundació Pilar i Joan Miró Award in Spain. The artist has participated in various solo and group exhibitions in India, Spain, Poland, Korea, Japan, Finland and Germany. His works are in numerous private and public collections in India, Europe and the USA.

He lives and works in Bengaluru.

Untitled, acrylic, fi breglass, dimensions variable, 2001. Exhibition installation view, Talwar Gallery, New York, 2002

Dawn to Dawn, trace of fi re, silkscreen, 109 x 17”, 2004. Private collection, Texas

Container as Content,fi breglass, sand; left: 25 x 25 x 34”; right: 70 x 57 x 34”, 2006

The Tree Inside, fi breglass, silicon, charcoal on paper, 138 x 47 x 83” (cast), 58 x 76” (drawing on the wall), 2006/2007

Facing page: Gravity, fi breglass and acrylic, 10 x 7 x 37”, 2006

I am interested in questioning limitations that impede the understanding

of reality – so I create evocations that contradict everyday experience and

preconceived ideas.

ALWAR BALASUBRAMANIAM

Breaking off from the linearity of the narrative/fi gurative tradition of the Vadodara School, Anandajit Ray arrived

at a highly individual vocabulary, DISTINCT FOR ITS SMALL FORMAT, COLLAGED QUALITY AND A SAVAGELY

WITTY SENSIBILITY.

A versatile painter, Ray has experimented successfully with small-sized sculptures and printmaking. However, his

prowess with watercolour is what sets him apart – at one level, his work recalls the stylized rendering of

miniature traditions, while at another it recreates the phantasmagoric worlds of a homegrown sci-fi genre, or

tacky detective novella.

Fantastical and bizarre, his imagery – it also serves as an ironic commentary on social and topical themes –

throws up stories within stories, leaving the viewer unfolding a veritable Pandora’s box of meanings. The

overriding effect is that of an uneasy pastiche fl oating in strange realms, where ‘acts of violence, terrorism and

death are seen as banal as organized bouts.’ Drawing from sources as far removed as comic books, botanical

drawings and miniature painting traditions, Anandajit Ray works much like a scientist with his magnifying glass

to create visual narratives both exquisite and kinky in parts.