Flesh and Bone

Abhay Sardesai considers the contract between word and image in the works of eight artists.

- Abhay Sardesai

THIS ESSAY IS TAKEN FROM IMAGE AND TEXT ISSUE OF ART INDIA VOLUME XIII, ISSUE IV, 2020.

1.

The word and the image have often behaved like the best of friends and the worst of enemies. From Dadaist photomontages to Conceptual commentaries, they have exchanged enthusiasms, cut into each other's orbits, interrupted each other's flows and engaged in prolonged inter-play. The frisson of excitement that this has generated has generally been good news for art.

Contemporary artists have steered these diverse signalling systems to startling effect. In the hands of able practitioners, their shared ecologies have led to intense aesthetic experiences and layered signification.

2.

With a rare, critical self-awareness, Atul Dodiya locates himself at the grand confluence of diverse expressive forms - European, Bengali and Hindi cinema; European and Indian literature; and classical and modern art. He often uses this rich and copious inheritance to fashion a formal and substantive response to insistent public and private histories through his artworks. The written word and the echoes it has gathered over time become an endless resource for his mosaic of quotations.