March 29, 1999
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DHRUVA MISTRY Cutting Edge In culling the abstract from the real, the artist's latest show captures ideas that transcend time and space. By Madhu Jain
Cutting edge or not, Ferriters Cove in Dingle, Southern Ireland, gave Mistry his little epiphanies: not having been to the Himalayas, this raw and unspoilt expanse of sea and rocky seashore and land shrouded in permanent mists was the closest to anything spiritual he'd experienced. Leaving aside his chisel and his paint brushes, Mistry picked up his camera and couldn't stop clicking: the artist, who has the rare distinction of becoming at 34 a member of the Royal Academy of Arts of Great Britain, is known for his monumental sculptures. Of these, the publicly commissioned Victoria Garden sculptures in the heart of Birmingham are among the more significant.
On first take, the show seems incongruous: what do Irish mists and toothy rocks have to do with the naked men and women in Mistry's etchings or with his rounded, nude bronzes? But the dichotomy is only an illusion. There is a primeval, dawn-of-civilisation air about the works. And everything, whether a print or a photograph, has a sculpted feel. The moss and peaty beaches of the photographs seem as timeless as the bearded nude man with curious horns chiselling away at a rocky surface: both man and terrain are situated in a similar never-never landscape. And yes, there are hints of the sea here too. Why does Mistry title his etchings From the North? The series were done in Glasgow, which is pretty much as north as you can go in the United Kingdom. But it's the word and concept which interest him, not the mere geography. Perhaps, it is his answer to Orientalism: the occidental turning to the Orient to define himself. As he explains, turning south was, for the Europeans, a way of getting to the philosophical base of their civilisation: that is Greece. For him it has to be the other way. "As an Indian, going north has the same value. North is the Himalayas where there is peace and calm and it is the abode of the gods." Obviously, Mistry drifts but there's an internal compass: there is a method to his drift. This artist-who-would-be-a-philosopher is not interested in the markings of time on civilisation. Nor do ideas which get encapsulated into fads concern him: he talks of the past hundred years as a hiccup in the steady procession of life and art. "A philosopher who becomes a chronicler is of no value," he says. "He has to capture the essence of life. It has to be a thought that can withstand time. Human beings are human beings," adds Mistry, the tautological man, for whom "things are things". Thus, clothed people and other embellishments are not of interest. Neither are narratives. "I am interested in what is underneath our skin, not underneath our clothes," he explains. Mistry's protagonists in the From the North series are those men and women who manage to have both an ancient and contemporary feel about them. The figures, despite being two dimensional have a rounded, solid mass, like Fernand Leger's figures. Sometimes, they take mythological wing, literally. Mistry has also built up a personal vocabulary of objects, his very own hieroglyphics. And there are variations of the objects, like a raga. For example, a three-legged chair pops up in the lithographs: it also has a mammoth avatar and a smaller more linear version in a painting. Other ubiquitous objects include a bottle, which is based on a blue enamel bottle which belonged to his father, a big book and a sharp tool with a tiger head at one end. Mistry's sculptures on show are movement frozen in bronze. Again, the contemporary and the ancient tango together, especially his Tree Spirit, with Yakshi-like figures whose long braided hair is inseparable from the tree. He's also experimented by carving chalk and then casting it in metal, "Stone is too slow for me, chalk allows me the pace of speaking. I can paint in 3-D this way," he says. Particularly impressive is Spatial Diagram, a sculpture of a woman whose hair is wound like a taut muscle which supports the piece. In fact, the hair is like a limb and the woman seems to have been assembled with all the components. "The limbs are an element and are organised in such a way structurally, like making a scaffolding," he explains. Tautological, my dear Mr Mistry. |
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There's always been something contrary
about Dhruva Mistry. Others head for the Himalayas to quench their spiritual thirst. The
formidable 42-year-old artist with an insolent crew cut and a determined jaw, however,
headed north. Actually, north by north-west and to the "westernmost tip of the
West" where he says he "walked on that edge where there was nothing but the
Atlantic". 
Not only did the camera not
lie for Mistry, it told more than the truth. When he saw the images, he could only think
of Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher. So he juxtaposed Nietzsche's words with his
images. Curiously, most of the images are the combination of two photographs in which the
separate horizons merge. Real, yet abstract and philosophical conundrums, this set of 26
prints -- titled Thoughts about Things: Leaves From Eire -- forms only a part of Mistry's
intriguing show at the Gallery Espace, Delhi, that spans a decade of his work. From the
North, an edition of six lithographs and two drypoints as well as a few pieces of
sculpture are also being exhibited. 
