Grass

Recent Photographs

 

 

 

Riyas Komu
23rd  March- 15th April, 2005
10.00 am to 6.30 pm
 



Click on the picture for details.

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The 28 portraits here are of boys who have become men before their time. Riyas met most of them in a garage in Borivili, a far – flung suburb of Bombay, where he currently works on sculptures in metal. The boys migrated to Bombay from various parts of the country for a living.

 

 

The faces all smile without exception. What they are smiling through is a childhood smashed to smithereens, eternal vigil not to slip into crime, absence of familial affections, the pandemic Indian curse of blighted life. What they are smiling through is the wasteland of their existence, the iron in the soul.

 

 

What they are smiling at though is the future. It’s not as if that future is fail proof. Future is a gray country full of phantoms. It’s Fantasy Land. And in fantasy lies flight – and hope. You need faith to realize your future. You can see faith shining in these eyes, painting the portraits precious.

 

 

The photographs find a place in the sun on archival paper, and in gray. You could super impose print on it, and the features will still survive it. Just like a durable human weathered by life. In that sense, the material, medium and message morph into each other in this effort, which I see as catholic in essence. It’s the charitable intent of Riyas’s camera that leverages a few grimy lives into the realms of a grainy heroism. That Riyas has chose to call this exhibition Grass is ironical. Only those who have reached the other side of the fence know that all that’s green slips by imperceptible degrees into shades of gray.

 

 

Together, these photographs develop a stylized critique of a people’s warped aesthetics, a fundamental structuring principle of the mind. In the process, it seems clear to me, the green that Riyas is talking about is actually these 28 incandescent blades of grass, fading, merging into the uniform grey, the colour of our industrial culture. The expectant eyes here have not yet seen fully what’s in store on the other side of the fence, but we do. Because, we are the other side, the grey world’s permanent tenants. And we gaze at these young faces, as if through a curtain of grey grains, recalling the promise that wasn’t made good in us.

 

 

C P SURENDRAN  

Bombay  

C.P. Surendran is a poet, novelist living and working in Bombay.

 

BioData

RIYAS KOMU  

Born 1971, Kerala, India.

B.F.A. & M.F.A. at Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai (!992 – 99).  

 

 

SOLO EXHIBITIONS :

2005 :             Grass, The Guild, Mumbai

2003 :             Sarasu – photography show on Raja Ravi Verma Press, The Guild, Mumbai

2002 :             UNCODITIONAL, Sakshi Art Gallery, Mumbai; AMBULANCE, Renaissance Art   

                      Gallery, Bangalore.  

 

 

 

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:

2005 :               Are we like this only? Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi.

                        Whose space is it anyway? Gallery Espace, New Delhi.

                        Mannat Jali, Marine Drive, Mumbai.

                        Public Art Project, Chemould gallery, Mumbai.

                        WSF show, Brazil.

 

2004 :               V.M. Art Gallery in Karachi, Pakistan during VASL Residency.

                        Anticipations, Museum Gallery, Mumbai.

                        A New Mediatic Realism, Bayer ABS Gallery, Baroda.

                        Generation I, Saffron Art Gallery, Mumbai.

                        RED, Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi.

                        Mumbai x 17, Kashi Art Gallery, Cochin.

 

2003 :               Crossing Generations: Diverge, 40 years of gallery Chemould, NGMA, Mumbai.

                        Highlights, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai.

                        2D/3D, Visual Art Center, Hong Kong.

                        Ideas And Images, NGMA, Mumbai.

                        Art for Art / Switzerland Meets India, Kala Ghoda Festival, Mumbai.

 

2002 :               Ways of Resisting 1992-2002, Sahmat / Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi.

                        Words and Images, The Guild / NGMA, Mumbai.

                        Creative Space, Sakshi Gallery / India Habitat Center, New Delhi.

                        Crosscurrents, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai.

                        Asian Art Festival, Singapore.

                        Harmony Shows (2004 – 1999), Nehru, Centre, Mumbai; New Delhi.

                        Debt, The Guild, Mumbai.

                        Tribute to Picasso, The Guild, Mumbai.

 

2001 :               The Human Factor, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai.

                        Engendering Images of women, The Guild, Mumbai.

                        Excerpts from my diary, Fine Art Company, Mumbai.

 

2000 :               Mumbai Metaphor, Tao Art Gallery, Mumbai.

                        Exile Longings, Lakeeren Art Gallery, Mumbai.

                        Memos of the New Millennium – Artist from the Moulting World,

                        Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Mumbai.

                        Ideas and Images (Video installation), NGMA, Mumbai.

 

1999 :               Critics choice, Ideas and Images, NGMA, Mumbai.

 

1998 :               ‘He used to believe that EMS planet coconut tree in Kerala’,

                        Installation, Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai.

                        Essays in time-Kinetic sculpture (Audio – Visual Installation),

                        Nehru Center, Mumbai.

                        Hebbar foundation scholarship 1998 – 1999.