Arunkumar HG

MATERIALITY OF THE SIGNS: THE MEDLEY OF PUBLIC IMAGES

-Anshuman Dasgupta( for the catalogue)

The Lure: Material
Arunkumar once imagined a project where he started out by constructing balloons, balloons that look very alluring till scrutinized; for, when scrutinized, they somewhat burst. These are the functioning units of a linguistic scheme he is poised to subvert in his work.
There are points in history when time appears as a garden of forking paths, where moves are made out of choices offered. We do live in one such confusing and transitional time which may refuse to fit in any doctrinaire chronicity or even in any inordinate, though neat subjective lore.
These days, Arun seizes on the material aspects of the moment and objects at large, but he also does ground them in the field of desire and critiques them.
The materials as such seem alluring, quite in contradistinction to what we expect from an artist. Hence, the first viewing, said to be very important for an impression on the viewers, seems deceptive. For, they are bound to attract you to the surface appearances of the real objects showing as unreal, magical things- things that move, things that are non categorical, illusive in origin or in content or context, or even exotic.
Arunkumar works out his basics via the material supports, where an illusionary object like a photo can be made of a material that interacts with its background by logic of postponement, of an imminent transformation. The object-message stands still, in equipoise, in a limbo.
All the surfaces are very attractive indeed. His images and their innate critiques are in a state of postponement when one first encounters them. Some of these object/ signs don’t move, literally and metaphorically, as some others do- producing a whirr in the ears, while watching even the apparently innocuous compositions.

State of Siege: Context(s)
For the last nine or more years Arun has been collecting newspaper clippings, they are fragments, not exactly for systematic archiving of news/ documents of the world.
Arun has not attempted that either. His earlier somewhat imaginary balloon-project would have taken him to a children’s park where he would have interacted with children gathered around his huge balloon-like globe. For this he had thought of taking the help of the latex factory he was working in then. He’d thought of making a huge balloon globe, blowing it big, pasting the newspaper fragments upon them and then bursting the balloon. So what remained would have been a globe, but a globe grounded; made of paper, of unsung news and documents you would never use, but retaining traces of the world events of a few days, months or even years. So, may be, you would notice.
From his first few real and imaginary experiences of public interaction Arun has evolved a symbolic scheme over the years, a scheme that is near to his earlier concerns about the world- but closer to home, more specific. The current set of works is a pointer to an imminent danger of entering a vexed zone of consumption, which is not conspicuous, hence normally overlooked. Arun’s farming background, comes back to haunt him now. He developed the idea of food under the rubric of Hunger in the World Social Forum conference/ workshop called World @ Hunger in Brazil in the year 2005. Ceramic dishes meant to serve food were printed with the pictures of farmers’ hands. The hands formed a landscape by themselves whose furrows looked like dried up rivers and canals and the cups like the scorched earth during draught.
Farmer’s in the erstwhile third world are hit by every other calamity, the lack of irrigation and the loss of farmland has led to suicide en mass, for years now. They have been affected by environmental factors and human exploitation, social engineering, and more often than not, a lack of it, which tells us the tale of anomaly and imbalance that we in our lives as consumers do often forget. Arun’s “Feed” series evolved to give that sign a certain material visibility.
This could be called a state of exception, which actually may prove to be in continuum with our consumption and production, only surfacing here and there as news, only occasionally; as and when they look like exceptions. For people caught within these situations, it is a state of permanent siege.
There is a sense in which Arun could be called a producer. Hence there is not much of a distance or detachment between him and the objects he may produce. He would perhaps expect them to carry an apparently simple message in a complex garb. The roles of medium and message do reverse at times.
In recent times, Arun has printed images of hands on common dinner table clothes as a connective to his earlier concerns over the anomaly of production and consumption, this works as well as a reminder. Beneath the apparently depthless surface lurk the failed desires of those nameless producers/ farmers and Arun’s own agitprop-like pointers.
Thematic: the Spread
Arunkumar’s works, in their appearances seem ready for description. The horses jostle for their places while fed- and for wholeness, halved bulls similarly give out ideas about the split; as an extension we do encounter human beings in replication at their lunches, in every possible innocuous space- under the stairs, in an empty yard, etc.
Some of his scenes depict the common but unexpected view of workers taking a break, taking their lunches at a nondescript place. These spaces and scenarios are the background in which a possible argument of consumption begins.
Arunkumar sources the other sides of the theme from within the fold of materials and not descriptions. If they are to be described they have to be forced upon, which would be a violence upon a prospective violence already present.
The most interesting in the thematic are the double-ended portrayals of the animals, and the mutant human family. The animals are no Magdeburg mutants trying to test out the strength of a third object but are creatures of destiny from the hinterlands of industrial cities. Then there are the unfamiliar creatures, part of a series called “Feed”, watching- live television. Thus fed continuously, they transform into the mutant families that are the present-day entities, creatures of destiny trapped in a media age, caught within the networks of the entertainment industry, abysmally uncertain, but certainly on an asymmetrical receiving end.
The Recovery: Objects/ Signs
Uniformity in the expectations from the material lure would be deceptive, for expectations alter without consideration for pasts, in the realm of objects. The critical aspects set in without our noticing. Objects often are taken for something outside them. They set a ground for public ness, quite a metonymic pull.
The same material surfaces would then set grounds for maneuvers.
The others, or possible others would then come to bracket the lure.
A tension thus begins, between objects concepts and history.
This dramatization is a sign, according to me, of a subjectivity retrieved from the lure of materiality, and doubly, from the undefined universal to which it could be relegated, in the humanist mores. Arun puts a material surface, very vexed material like the photographic, in its current digital, dehumanized version, upon the materials which would have a possible past, a history or a belonging.
The roles are somewhat reversed. The past lure, the realm of proper materiality is only a stilt for the virtual maneuver; a support that does not hold anymore- produces ironies against the metaphors in use.
A game for the viewer begins, ushered in by a no-author situation; through materials and maneuvers, the message is sent across, the invites too.
The dramatization depends on the intensity of the audience, highly chancy, but prospectively very intense interaction is thus set off; a bold, and possibly virile interaction in an unknown zone of objects before the public.

References:
The State of Exception: Giorgio Agamben, University of Chicago Press, 2005
The Rule of Metaphor: Paul Ricoeur, Routledge, 1975, 77
Art Since 1900: Hal Foster, Yves Alain Bois, Rosalind Krauss, Benjamin Buchloh, Thames and Hudson, 2004

* DIFFERENT TAKES
Matters of Art, September 2006
Rahul Bhattacharya visits ‘Feed’, an exhibition of new works by Arun Kumar H.G. at Nature Morte New Delhi, and gets sucked into questions of art, articulation and language.

Crowded opening at Nature Morte, a dash of heavy rain outside; entering through a haze of people and wine, the eye travels disconcertingly… Two green cows gazing in helpless consumption at tubful of television screens; a split image of a harnessed horse… resting as it pulls itself in two different directions. A loud clockwork noise coming in from one room… one could catch a glimpse of yellow stuffed toys moving about in mechanical chaos. “Does not look like a solo show,” the mind said. Everything way too fragmented, it seemed.

Nearly a week later a Friday afternoon, Nature Morte felt a lot different. One needed to
catch-up with the artist again to rerun some initial notions. “Feed” is what the show is called. Somehow as one began to tour the show again it felt less and less scattered.

Arun Kumar H.G. sits at a strange space between being a sculptor and being a conceptual artist. Why should there be a split? Actually the dilemma hovers because conceptual art is increasingly being conceptualized in a particular manner that it (by and large) divorces a conceptual artist’s works from any engagement with materiality. Arun Kumar’s engagement with the ‘sculptural’ cannot be understood bypassing his engagement with the materials he works with, and resists the temptation of the ‘readymade’. Where does this rare combination come from, is a question on which one can ponder over for a longer time. But, as of now what really engages is returning back to the alleged fragmentary nature of Arun Kumar H.G.’s show.

Sampling opinions across the city one realized that the reason why it appeared fragmentary to many minds, is the range of materials and ‘treatments’ one encountered in the show. We are used to having ‘medium’ being conceptually linked with ‘language’, thus there is always a feeling of ‘many languages’ when one comes across Arun’s show. However, as one engages the ‘intentionality’…it occurs that the show is designed to be thematically coherent…and is, in a certain sense, trans-media. Thus it is only fair that the scrutiny should be on how the thematic is understood and translated.

So ‘Feed’ it is…what does ‘Feed’ mean? Is it a philanthropic act, or is it ‘forcing to consume’ (hints of violence)? Either way one encounters hierarchy. This ‘hierarchy’ seems to be the essence around which one could begin to take multiple stances on ‘Feed’.

As one walked the small flight of stairs, one comes across various images of Nandi, and it is here that the thematic become strained. The haplessly melancholic green cows being fed ‘live’ TV, is directly inter-relatable with ‘Feed’ (a translation mediated through certain strands of neo Pop sensibilities). The vibrant pink bunnies glued to their toy room television are also on the same lines (though they play on different metaphorical levels). The Dinning Table (‘The Meal’) is a different critical problem altogether, and has its own space in the review; but if one come back to the Nandi sculptures on Nature Morte’s one and a mezzanine floor (‘Nandi’, ‘The Landscape’ and the ‘Processor’), there is a feeling that the thematic are stretched a little bit. There is a dialogue between ‘Nandi’ and ‘The Landscape’…the axial placements establish the intertexuality. It does point towards a certain hierarchy and hypocrisy in how the ‘Indian nation’ as a society treats the bull as an animal, and thereby a certain connection with the essence of ‘Feed’ can be traced…but it is an oblong connection. (Ironically the ‘Processor’ placed in this segment is one of the most experimentative and aesthetically engaging works on display.)

Climbing down that flight of stairs, one enters the room from where the loud clockwork noise was coming from. In this quiet afternoon gallery, one required the artist to switch on the machine for you. When it all comes on, the heavy satire of this work hits you hard. Using stuffed toys as a trope, the artist makes a hard-hitting comment on the poultry industry and the riot of the ‘humane’ that happens in the name of breeding and feeding. The power of the work lies in luring the audience through a soft, playful device and then turning it into a monster.

‘The Meal’, Arun’s dinning table installation, speaks its own discursive tone as one engages with it closely. A conversation with the artist reveals the original context of the work (World@Hunger in Brazil, as a part of the World Social Forum 2005). However, one can imagine people enjoying a hearty dinner completely oblivious to the semantics of the work. In an epoch when people are used to seeing gruesome murder flashed next to Coke advertisements, challenges to ‘consumption’ (maybe) need to be better strategized.

The series of photo digital-prints that dominate the basement are in fact the ‘binding thread’ of the show (depending on where one imagines the thread should be). The photographs capture people and animals in their intimate space of a meal, yet manages to capture the ‘enforced’…the lack of choice and hierarchy, that are central to ‘Feed’ as a concept and as a metaphor.

Of course, what makes ‘Feed’ as a show critically challenging is Arun Kumar H.G ’s knack of articulating social densities through layers of ‘playful aesthetics’. Trained as a sculptor Arun had worked as a toy designer, and this experience has had a great impact on the aesthetics of his artistic practice. Maybe it is this background that allows Arun to be trans-mediatic in his approach, and yet retain a high degree of ‘skill’ when it comes to the physical shaping of the ‘medium’. The manner in which he has carved the cows in ‘Feed’, the gentle yet strong curves of the muscles…need to be remembered…and not lost in the maze of interpretations.

Visually the works stand and engage, the relation between the work and the exhibition concept ranges from strained to great fineness in understanding and articulation. Maybe if the artist engages with thematic over a prolonged period of time, conceptually the ‘body of works’ will have greater coherency and depth. However, the real ‘take home’ from this show is the domain of ‘fantasy realism’ where the artist manages to transport us into.

Rahul Bhattacharya

* THE FOOD CHAIN
Gitanjali Dang
Hindustan Times Mumbai; 06/10/2006

Unlikely juxtapositions have always been the norm in the visual Arts . In the case of Arunkumar H.G.’s recent suite of conceptual and sculptural works titled Feed unlikely juxtapositions transmogrify into a visual science. Feed, delves into the disparities that shape the food chain. Astroturf replaces grass, visual stimuli emanating from the television screens is the new fodder. Input Output engages with the post-industrial world and delightfully incorporates popular culture into the mechanical domain. Photographs such as The Other and The Other End are made all the more worrisome and eerie because they are accompanied by the Siamese other, in that H.G. fuses two images to create a mutant world that feeds off urban detritus. H.G is not a child of popular culture alone and even the Indian religious motifs have been incorporated as in the case of Nandi who sits atop a throne of discoloured polythene remains obviously rescued from the dumps. visual arts
Gitanjali Dang
Hindustan Times Mumbai; 06/10/2006

* CHEWING THE CUD
DNA salon Mumbai
Amrita Gupta-Singh

Friday, September 29, 2006 22:31 IST

Arunkumar’s Feed playfully addresses serious issues, says Amrita Gupta-Singh.

Social definitions in contemporary society revolve around consumption, its patterns and effects. The privileged often indulge in conspicuous consumption; the underprivileged dream. This leads to tremendous waste and irreparable class disparities. Arunkumar HG, an artist based in Delhi, deals with such concerns regarding production and consumption in his new exhibition Feed, currently showing at the Sakshi Gallery. Trained as a sculptor at the MS University of Baroda, he works in various disciplines, including photography and toy design, which impacts his art. This eclectic approach allows Kumar to articulate his ideas through remarkable, layered meanings.

The concept of Feed was developed at a World Social Forum workshop titled ‘World@Hunger’, in Brazil in 2005. The artist explores the connections between hunger and the act of feeding in the socio-economic scenario, through metaphors using workers and animals trapped in a capitalist society, and the endless flow of information through the media. A recurrent symbol is the bull—in its agrarian associations, or feeding on television, or as Nandi, either seated on, or feeding on urban waste. Another profound work is that of a dining table installation with images of workers hands and farmers tilling their lands, which points to the labour and sources of food we consume. Other works explore how science and technology often transform natural mechanisms—such as the poultry industry—to constantly feed our consumerist society.

Arunkumar brings in neo-pop sensibilities by using readymade objects such as toys, plastic, ceramics, cowdung, hay and TV monitors, and also displays a high degree of skill in his sculpted images. In the interplay of playful/absurd imagery and serious concerns, Kumar’s work may appear dense to the common viewer, but layered associations become clear through conversations with the artist. If galleries could organise interactive discussions with artists, it would enrich the viewers, underscoring the socially transformative role of art.

Feed, Arunkumar HG, Sakshi Gallery, ongoing till Oct 6.