Notes from Delhi: Voyeur

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I like art.

I also like watching people look at art. I think one of the best things about art is seeing how people react to it.

Once I stopped hyperventilating about being in the same space as an original Dali and Picasso, I walked around the India Art Fair. I watched as people stared at cracked mirrors and giant black concave installations with complete bemusement or squirmed uncomfortably in front of the overly sexual, more provocative pieces.

My exposure to art on such a mass scale has been limited to the Colombo Art Biennale and the annual Kala Pola so the art fair kind of blew my mind. It was visually exhausting moving from one piece to another rapidly in an effort to ‘do’ everything and despite this, I still missed out on an entire hall.  I fervently wished I had another day to come back and go through everything in my own time and pace.

I can’t lie. I didn’t understand a lot of it and I think my lack of aesthetic refinement might have hindered my art appreciation. Hopefully one day I will be able to gaze at a 15 minute video installation of a woman gnawing at a raw onion and have an epiphany. Till then, I’ll have to make do.

This chap remained absorbed by the TV journalist covering the fair.

This piece left quite a few people confused.

She took a liking to Tapas Sarkar’s sculptures and insisted on saying bye to each and every one of them before she left.

A bit of context might be necessary here – the installation was one of two boxes which had knives sliding in and out of it, automatically

Pictures of people taking pictures of pictures

Ps: He probably won’t read this but thank you to Spanish artist, Gines Serran and his son, who took pity on a poor student and took me on a tour of his work and demystified some of the context and process. It was lovely getting insight from the inside.

Ps 2: I’m starting to realize that I may come off slightly stalker–like in this post.  I’m really not.

10 thoughts on “Notes from Delhi: Voyeur”

  1. oh no, you don’t come off as slightly stalkerish at all. 😛 In any case this would be a lovely art project itself 🙂

    “same space as a Picasso and a Dali” :O make me jealous why dont’cha

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  3. You have four pictures of a man looking at a painting, and all without alerting him of your presence. Are you sure you’re not a stalker?

    I love that shark/Formula1 sculpture! Some interesting pieces, though not all art is that way (like you’re motorized knife-in-a-box”. I went with T to a painting exhibit at Barefoot last week and had not even the slightest clue what I was looking at. T was of course enraptured. Clearly she’s the brains of the outfit and I’m the lumbering sidekick.

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  4. It was Druvinka’s exhibition; nothing short of jaw droppingly stunning. My boyfriend has other talents.. (i tell myself)

    Can’t say I’m really feeling the modern art movement at the mo. Much prefer the traditional paint on a surface style. Though on the flipside, kalapola this year showed me exactly how that can go wrong; barely any creativity.

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    • Druvinka’s paintings are fantastic. I love the layer on layer thing she has going on. I prefer the traditional stuff for the most part too. I guess we’re old fashioned like that.

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