Tamed by Culture Resisted by Images:

New Works

Gireesh GV & VP Baalakrishnan

10- 18 September 201011 am to 7 pm

Gallery OEDOpp-Lotus club,Warrium roadCochin-16,Kerala

Gireesh G V, Born 1970, Kerala

1996 M FA - Painting, SN School of Fine Arts and Performing arts, Central University of Hyderabad1993 B F A - Painting, College of Fine Arts, University of Kerala

Exhhibitions2009 5 member group show in Travancore gallery in New Delhi2006 Participated in fund raising group show by Smt. Maneka Gandhi in New Delhi2003 Participated in a group show in Habitat Center New Delhi1996 Solo Exhibition, Durbar Hall, Lalita Kala Academy, Ernakulam, Kerala1996 Solo Exhibition, in Sopanam Art gallery Kollam1993 Two men show in Alliance Franchisee in Trivandrum1992 Group show in Trivandrum Museum gallery

Projects2010 “Awakenings in Bodhgaya”, a coffee table book project- on Bodhgaya 2008 Coffee table book on Microsoft in India “ 10 years of MSIDC in India”2003 A feature on Bangladeshi immigrants in New Delhi. This project was carried out in collaboration with World Press Photo organization

Achievements1997: Awarded fellowship for artists from ministry of Human Resource New Delhi1993: Gold Medal of the First All India Rajasthan Circuit of Photography 1991: Awarded to certificate of Merit by Photo Journalism Division of India International Photographic Council, An-nual Photo Contest. Participated in Various national and international Photographic exhibitions in India since 1990

Work Experience 2004 – 2008 Senior Photographer, India Today News Magazine1999 – 2004 Photographer for Outlook News Magazine and its sister Publications 1997 – 1999: Photographer for Life Positive New Age Magazine, New Delhi 1997 Lecturer in Fine Arts, Department of Architecture, TKM College of Engineering, Kollam, Kerala. Lives and works in Bangalore, India as a documentary photographer30, Block-B,, Keerthi Riviera, 6th –‘G’ Cross, Kaggadasapura,C V Raman Nagar, Banzgalore 560093. +91-9448454494; gireeshgv@gmail.comhttp://www.gireeshgv.com

“07 July 2010”B & W on archival print

“05 july 2008”B & W on archival print

“20th july 2006”Colour on archival print

“13th august 2008”Colour on archival print

“14th august 2008”Colour on archival print

“18th novemebr 2009”B & Won archival print

“31 may 2005”Colour on archival print

“02 february 2009”Colour on archival print

“09 july 2010”B & W on archival print

“15th june 2010”B & W on archival print

“20 june 2008”Colour on archival print

“14th july 2010”Colour on archival print

“30 december 2007”Colour on archival print

“22 february 2008”Colour on archival print

Two artists, VP Baalakrishnan and Gireesh GV, one a painter, sculptor and installation artist and the other a documentary photographer, when they come together to do an exhibition, the primary interest of a viewer would be to know the affinities between them in terms of the thematic or style rather than the ‘differences’ that define their respective identities as artists. Here, the affinities are apparently negligible and differences are pronounced and glaring, and the auto-curatorial intentions seem to be reluctant to manifest. However, a closer look at these two artists’ works would reveal that, through a diversified set of images they attempt to locate the ‘conflict of interests’ between man and nature, man and man, man and machinery and man and the categories of acculturation.

Taking an aesthetic route of making minimalist and conceptual sculptural assemblages, Baalakrishnan radically moves away from his earlier painterly concerns and creates a set of works that is thematically cohesive, conceptually curious and aesthetically appealing. Baalakrishnan makes an intense search within the behavioral and ethical dynamics of social beings and their relationship with not only the animated but also the in-animated entities around them. For the artist, hailing from a temple/religious background in Kerala, the image of elephant could not have been less aesthetically and intellectually engaging than any other potential image.

Baalakrishnan, who has grown up in a socio-cultural and religious milieu where elephants play a great role as religious symbol, a trophy animal, a being that embodies the beauty of nature and an animal to be wondered at, emblematizes the very same animal in order to capture the conflict of interests. Perhaps, a sociological and biological observation on elephants would prove that they symbolize an anachronistic existence of nature within the controlled culture of human beings. The Elephant is considered to be an animal that could be tamed through rigorous ways of punitive education, even when it carries the uncontrollability of the forest.

Hence, the initial conflict is between nature and culture. Baalakrishnan looks at culture as a cruel way of taming the creative instincts of the people (as a ‘tool of civilization) as well as the animals and make them fit into the social frameworks designed and executed by hegemonic ideologies. Usually, when a mahout takes rest, he keeps a stick against the leg of an elephant and the elephant gets a ‘cultural’ command/ a punitive code conveyed through this act and it remains there still like a very obedient ‘man’ till the mahout wakes up. This notion of punitive code or how the culture tames the nature is symbolized in a work titled, ‘Basic Alphabets’ in which Baalakrishnan keeps four wooden sticks against a wall (these sticks are called ‘karakkol’ or ‘kara vadi’ in the local parlance).

Here, the artist plays the double role of the creator of culture (thereby having the same perverted pleasure of

Tamed by Culture, Resisted by ImagesNew Works by VP Baalakrishnan and Gireesh GV

getting nature under control) as well as the critic of it (by highlighting the poignancy of the moment of control through a symbol/symbolic act). In ‘Declarative Sentence’, Baalakrishnan plays up the double speech of the society that encodes the language with double meanings. Using the linguistic structure of power, the artist brings forth the image of three punitive instruments that are used for taming an elephant, decorated with ritual ornaments used over the body of the elephants when they are brought to a temple/social festival.

‘Declarative Sentence’, is an open statement on the one hand, and on the other it connotes the declaration of a severe punishment towards achieving social control (1). The Foucauldian twist that Baalakrishnan gives to his work is interesting as it at once forces the sign to move away from the signified and the process of signification becomes something else in the final reception. ‘Long Essay- I’ is a work that has a small sculpture/toy/trophy sculpture of an elephant walking over, again, a punitive instrument specially designed for taming an elephant. Here the elephant essays its own life, a long and torturous one, at the hands of the human beings who declare their love for elephants at every passing second. In ‘Long Essay- II’, Baalakrishnan essays another anecdote from the rigorous lives of the elephants as creatures that are destined to live with their chained up legs through out their life within ‘culture’. The elephant toy kept within an iron chain tells the story of it. Against the diminutive figure of the elephant, the chain (the symbol of culture) looks massive and threatening.

The image of elephant in Baalakrishnan’s works is simultaneously both a surrogate and an actual symbol. It at once speaks of the plights of elephants, which, as aforementioned, are culturally therefore unnaturally tamed and trained, and it critiques all establishments that are meant for taming ‘wild’ beings (including human beings) through punitive methods. Louis Althusser calls these establishments as ‘ideological state apparatuses’ (ISAs). Baalakrishnan, while pointing at the interventions that these ISAs make in our lives, tells us how we as unmindful social beings forget that we are also tamed and controlled like the elephants, by the ISAs. ISAs make us believe that we are taken care of an en-cultured in the process. While we take pleasure in watching a tamed elephant and even hero-worship them, we fail to recognize that we also behave like punitive social agencies, which, as cultural beings, we often tend to oppose.

Gireesh GV prefers to call himself a documentary photographer and inspiration for training his camera at the images comes from his social and professional role as a photo-journalist. However, he is conscious of the news angle when he places himself as a journalist. The major challenge that he handles during his innumerable journeys between newsworthy spots is his subjective positioning behind the camera; as Gireesh knows that a news photograph

could supplement a written news story as well as it could operate independently as an image. But, as a trained artist, Gireesh’s subjectivity is in contestation with the professional demands and based on this conflict, and he automatically positions his subjectivity as a camera wielding person who registers images not just for attaching with a written story for embellishment, but also for imparting aesthetic autonomy to the image.

This aesthetic autonomy that should be natural to the documentary photographs in which the artist supposedly takes a very objective and impartial stance for bringing out the truth of the ‘event’ which has been photographed, however should be seen as a deliberate negotiation of the artist/photographer between the image and the event that caused it. The truth value of the event could be manipulated (using technological devices) or it could be artificially manufactured (by creating the very event elsewhere in a studio as seen in advertisement and cinema stills) while even the documentary photographer is left with nothing but with the right to choose an angle within the given time and space. Hence, the objectivity of documentary photography becomes as debatable as the subjective interventions that automatically happen at least in the choice of angles.

Gireesh GV operates on this thin line between news photography and documentary photography. But according to him, it gives a fair amount of freedom as he could decide (as he becomes the authority of the images taken) on the pictures to be given as a part of the news assignment and the rest of pictures that has been saved for a different use. In this sense, what we witness as Gireesh’s photographs are the images that have been extracted after a serious (ideological) self negotiation. So, what interests one as a viewer is the quality of these images as images that resist their possible newsworthiness. Or else we could say that these are the pictures that Gireesh chooses for a different audience with a different sense of aesthetic discernment than a regular weekly/newspaper reader.

The resistance to newsworthiness is an interesting concept that operates throughout in the photographic images of Gireesh. Their autonomy as aesthetic images excludes the possibility of a spicy narrative (as in the news) at the same time as documentary photographs with aesthetic values, they demand a special reading from the viewer, which could facilitate a demand for building up a narrative which is, if not akin to the news stories, at least parallel to them. So we see a galaxy of pictures that operates in a constituency of autonomous narratives, which resist their entry into news and at the same time generate similar desires not only amongst the viewers but also in the artist himself.

What do we exactly see in Gireesh’s images? Are they just abstract pictures of light, shade and colors whose jumbles would eventually create an image? Are they just photographs of events that Gireesh feels important to be clicked?

Are they just registration of moments that would create sentimental resonances amongst the viewers? Or are they just photographs that would perhaps serve the illustration purpose of a graphic novel/narrative about a city on move? Interestingly, these questions contain the answers also. Each question exemplifies one particular characteristics of Gireesh’s photography. They are about light, shade and colors, they are about abstraction, they are about events, they are about sentimental moments, they are about images that have illustrative potential.

But at the same time they are about contemporary life in which conflict of interests features in a major way. One striking image of Gireesh is that of a traffic roundabout where a public sculpture stands witness to the daily grind. While the momentum of the city is palpable in this work, in a very special way Gireesh has tried to exclude the presence of human beings from the picture frame. Here, we see culture taking over and going round in a city, while the natural component of it, the human beings are pushed to its innards, to negligence or absence. The same exclusion of human beings (nature) by culture is seen in another photograph where Gireesh captures a moment of building culture/architecture; what covers the process is an artificial façade that collapses the difference between the real and the manufactured.

The exclusion of human presence from most of his works emphasizes how cruelly culture takes over the areas of human presence in the name of progress and development. And Gireesh takes a mock ideological vantage position in some of his works, from where he ‘looks down upon’ the images only to reveal the dizzying heights, spectacles that our society creates in order to frighten its own children. There are poignant moments of loneliness and isolation in Gireesh’s works. There are moments from rituals and journeys in his works. And whenever Gireesh trains his camera at an event/image, he does it with a sense of negation; negation of all what tames him into the zones of so called culture.

Before closing this essay I would like to reveal another interesting aspect of the journey these artists have taken up. Both Baalakrishnan and Gireesh did their graduation in fine arts from Trivandrum Fine Arts College. Once in Delhi, for a period of time both shared the same accommodation. Personal reasons made them to relocate themselves to Bangalore, again at the same time. And above all both of them are showing their works almost after seven years of creative struggles. This exhibition brings them together once again. Sometimes, life has more surprises for us than the ones we offer to it in regular intervals.

JohnyMLNew DelhiAugust 2010

Basic Alphabets

Long Essay 01

Long Essay 02

Declarative Verb

Double line copy (next page)

VP Baalakrishnan, Born 1969, Guruvayoor, Kerala.

1996 M F A - Painting, College of Art, New Delhi1993 B F A - Painting, Govt. College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram

Exhibitions 2003 Conversations within, Vasant Valley School, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi2003 Drawings, Gallery Epiqes, Green Park, New Delhi2003 Invasions. Organised by ASK in collaboration with India Habitat Center and Meera Center for Arts,India Habitat Center, Lodhi Road New Delhi 1999 Resonance Organised by Masters Guild (Alumni of College Art, New Delhi), Lalit Kala Galleries,Mandi House, New Delhi

Publications2008 Article 01: Reflections of Feminist art. Article 02: ‘Take Your Time’ Art concerns.com,Volume/Issue: June- July (Http://artconcerns.net/2008_june_july/index.htm)

Consultancy and Extension Activities2010 Teacher & Head of Art, Mallya Aditi International School (since 2005)2009 Guide & Msentor Art teachers in the area of pedagogical aspects and examination proceduresfor ICSE, ISC, IGCSE and AS and A level Art2009 Conceptual development and facilitation for a science based collaborative Mural atAgasthya Foundation at Kuppam, Andra Pradesh, involving the students of the Foundation and Aditi. 2007 Facilitator, Drawing & painting studio course (Short term) Srishti School Of Art, Design andTechnology, Bangalore 1999- 2004 Teacher & Head of Art, Vasant Valley School2002 Consultancy Graphic Designer, Learn Today 1997 Facilitator, Drawing module (Short term) NIFT, New Delhi1997 Visualiser, Icon Softec Lives and works in Bangalore, India401, Montana, Heritage Estate, YellahankaBangalore 560 106

+91 9916207974vpbaalakrishnan@gmail.comwww.vpbaalakrishnan.com

Tamed by Culture Resisted by Images:

New Works

Gireesh GV & VP Baalakrishnan

10- 18 September 201011 am to 7 pm

Gallery OEDOpp-Lotus club,Warrium roadCochin-16,Kerala