To thine own self be true…
It seems likely that instead of holding one stationary, fundamental self… we are all just a disordered, vulnerable shape shifting collection of traits and histories and tendencies that seem to wax and wane over time. And these various ‘selves, jostle for distinction from moment to moment — organically transforming with the click of the mouse, in a blink of an eye.
– Nandan Ghiya
Sakshi Gallery is delighted to present Ellipsis: Nandan Ghiya’s Spectral Emanations, as part of The Mumbai Gallery Weekend. The show previews on 9th of January 2020, and the exhibition will run till 15th of February. Nandan’s work depicts the rhetorical complexity of the image-culture, where vectorized surfaces, vintage photographs and spectral designs come to merge together. For the viewer, there are multiple layers and constant changes to discover.
Nandan’s work is an affiliation to regional history and collective identity. Yet it resists rote hegemonies of the past — new iconographies and meta-narratives inspired by digital culture foster alchemy of transience, splintering and fragmenting across time and space as the works mediate on an in-between state.
Nandan’s art is trailblazing as he presents the mutability of his images in an age where visual surfeit and obsessive self-representation have both become markers of the present. His work is a re-appropriation of sepia prints, introducing glitches and pixilation on the surface that he imagines as mutating selves — encountering, escaping and resurrecting new identities.
In an era defined by the ‘dynamic limbo’ of the virtual, the display further accentuates an intended interplay of form and space. Digital motifs are therefore playfully deployed as proverbial and mythical markers provoking curious binaries — erasure and invitation, rupture and reclaimed values. By manipulating associations, Nandan tries to surface the indroid from within the modern day Indian generation.
Nandan’s work consists of elongated frames, emphasizing the thresholds That need to be crossed, the Boundaries that need to be stretched,the additions, subtractions and multiplications to form that need to be embraced in order to reframe the contingencies of authorship and subjectivity.
Rupture and transformation are therefore the leitmotiv of Nandan’s peripatetic imagery, approaching the viewer with a series of failed yet forever attachments: to location, history and memory. The unique shape of the frames, personalized by the artist for every image, come to create a picture in its entirety.
Nandan Ghiya’s Spectral Emanations previews on the 9th of January 2020 and will be on view till the 15th of February 2020.