Abstracted realism

Two painters look at a world from behind layers of meaning.

As this is being written, Vinita Karim is in South Africa, in probably the Livingstone national park, which in itself is not exceptional. For it is Karim's peripatetic existence that will unravel next week when her exhibition, Elsewhere, opens at the Visual Arts Gallery at India Habitat Centre.

This, her second major solo in the city, is where her migrations and commuting have led her, past the mythologies and cultural linkages that made up her past works, to a point where she is poised on the brink of a world that, ominously, seems perched on the edge of disaster.

To arrive here Karim, who has lived in the subcontinent (Islamabad, New Delhi as well as Dhaka) as also in Stockholm, Berne, Cairo, Nuremberg and, now, Manila, has created and recreated herself, looking for a voice that is hers and, because she lacks moorings, is truly global.

Still, it is her changing oeuvre "" which has moved across geographies, bright colours, layerings and figurative forms "" that is important: serene though her "abstract urbanscapes" might be, it is the chilling nature of their content (and their titles, witness "copper rain", "collective chaos", "marooned", "wilted", "strip mall", "spotty, dodgy day") that are disturbing.

"It is an artist's job to observe the world around them," she justifies, a few days before the opening of her show, "to represent current issues." That representation, aptly summed up in the pages of Newsweek, which she has read assiduously in whichever part of the world she finds herself, forms part of her canvases along with recycled newsprint, parchment, papyrus, gold leaf, acrylic and oil paint.

As the soft colours bleed over layers, she transfers some of her angst on to abstractions that seem to suggest the stillness before apocalypse explodes.

In a market where the figurative form holds sway, sharing space with Karim at the same exhibition is Nitish Bhattacharjee whose unusually large canvases are filled with an explosion of energy as he defines, then distorts, spaces.

Bhattacharjee directs the eye through a series of juxtaposed geometries into seeing within frames. Large swathes are emptied of a context, and then positioned so that the directed eye dwells, once again, on the chaos of lived experiences, of felt dualities.

It is this that is important, the abstraction that, hitherto in India, has remained neglected as senior artists continue to grapple with figurative imagery, while their contemporary peers work within a paradigm of Indian exotica.

"It's almost as if India misses the bus again, and again, and again," says a curator. "That's simple, really," explains another gallerist: "While some offices are happy to invest in abstract art, when it comes to their homes, people look for works they can relate to."

Whatever the reason, the compelling urgency of abstraction is a state that younger artists explore, then give up on as the market feeds on monetary rather than artistic merit alone, cloning itself rigorously on an appetite of digestible art. In a sense, the Bharat Bhawan influence on both print-making and on pure abstraction is commendable in the last decades, even though it has been on the wane for some years now.

Bhattacharjee, who has studied and exhibited in Madhya Pradesh, has clearly benefitted from this, while Karim's global peregrinations may have inspired her to experiment more intensely with the form.

The recurring image in her works, of a boat or boats, she laughs, is a symbol of her various journeys, even perhaps of her quest for a homeland.

Whether she finds one or not eventually, at least on some canvases, she has created her own urban environments, no matter how fragile or vulnerable. As one gazes at them, it is with a feeling of disquietude: for when the calm shatters, where will you be when the storm follows?