Kolkata gets its first video-art installation show

They are neither oil on canvas nor watercolours on paper but moving images on screen projections and TV sets which are the highlights of the city's maiden video-art installation showcasing Scottish artist-filmmaker Paul Holmes' works.

The 'Outside the Box' show is a video-art installation, a contemporary art form that marries video technology with installation art.

Running at the Studio 21 gallery in south Kolkata till July 3, the assemblage of four installations includes still images, film, graphics and sound to transform viewers' understanding of modes of expression.

"I have been told that this is the first video art show in Kolkata and this is my first solo exhibition in the city," said Holmes, who also teaches at the School of Arts and Creative Industries, Edinburgh Napier University.

According to curator Manas Acharya, 'Outside the Box' - the exhibition's eponymous work - is a study of the facial ticks and tells of guitarist Haftor Medboe's Scandinavian jazz band as they navigate the half-rehearsed landscape of a jazz set.

Two of the works involve Holmes himself as the model.

In 'Time Machine', a high speed camera is trained on the artist's face as he subjects it to the most punishing of facial workouts while 'These Measures are for Your Protection', is a film that responds to the function of stress positions in history and the role of the photobooth in contemporary society.

Inspired by the pe-eminence of text in contemporary communications is the final film 'The Persistence of Vision', the curator said on Saturday.