|
TEMPERED
BY H2O: When
bottled water Sanpellegrino was launched at Delhi's Swiss Embassy, models
Mehar Bhasin (below) and Swareena Singh squabbled in a skit, made up and
swayed on stage after a gulp. "The point is, this water cools down
tempers," claims an official. Whatever.
Material World
 The
artist: A. Balasubramanium is 29 years old ... and believe
it or not, still growing. (No doubt a small miracle in the Indian art
world where many artists get stunted immediately after delivering their
first big hit.) Bala's previous show of prints drew encouraging applause
from the usually fagged-out viewers but this hasn't stopped him from progressing
further.
The artist away from work: Listens to African chant music and church
organ inflections apart from perfecting Chettinad curry, thayiru sadam,
pongal and puliyo garai. Glutinous friends will testify that the spices
are just right.
What he's been up to: Well, to begin with it was Madras College
of Art-but he flunked the entrance thrice before they finally let him
in. Then it was prints-colourful architectural maps, blind embossings
and neat rows of handmade holograms full of definiteness and geometrical
etiquette. Then it was of blanched drawings-compositions of pencil lines,
neat stationery labels and pastely tetragons inspired by an isolated stint
in Austria where there were no printing tools available. Now he's been
smitten by spatial pleasures of the 3-D art (or call it sculpture).
The show: At the British Council, Delhi, in collaboration with
Art Inc. Bala got the Charles Wallace Fellowship in 1998, hence the Brit
connection.
What almost worked: A semi-sculpture (and total installation) called
Heaven and Hell. The white pattern on top resembles a mildly pregnant
figure (heaven), and the plastic box below contains a menacing vulva spiked
by nails (hell, of course).
What worked: A beehive imitation fashioned out of cut plastic straw
and stuck to the ceiling. Now that's originality. Or the PVC pipe with
a vertical neon-light intestine ... actually Homage to a Saint. Or the
sky and cloud triptych plastered on wooden seats and looking like Boeing
747 windows ("that's because I travel a lot").
What didn't work: The series on minimalist drawings, which were
interesting but a trifle jaded. (But blame it on jet lag.)
-Anshul
Avijit
 YOU
LOOK LIKE A SCREAM: When
Cyclone, the boisterous Mumbai nightclub, celebrated Halloween, scooped-out
pumpkins, Casperish ghosts, mocking skeletons suits (left) and a b/w horror
movie set the mood for a truly morbid evening. Meanwhile, a Halloween
bash in Delhi was more mellow-but host Amrit Kiran Singh of Brown and
Foreman (far right) was sportingly dressed in a Dracula outfit. Huge skeletons
placed in dark corners completed the spooky look.
Top
|
How
can Non-Performing Assets of companies be cleared? By recovering what
you can, writes INDIA TODAY Associate Editor V. Shankar Aiyar in
