Wizard of install art

IT IS called Installation Art. There are trees, pillars, sand, cement floors all around. Structures everywhere waiting for life. Waiting for an artist to add to them.

There were four tall coconut trees at Alliance Francaise. Suddenly, there is one more, a truncated half tree. On it hangs some laminated articles - TJS George's `Point of View'. There is another picture of an oval-shaped skeleton.

A little to the right is the skeleton itself. It was an egg when the picture was taken. ``But everyone mistook it for a balloon.'' So the egg became a balloon.

Suspended by rope from a bamboo stick, it is made of steel tapes pinned together with huge areas of space in between. A `Rs. 500 note' dangles inside - ``transparency of greed'' - and below are pointed cones painted gold.

The artist, M. Natesh, leaves it you to interpret his art.

Once the rope of logic snaps, the pointed reality of life below will burst the desire. ``It is cliched,'' admits Natesh, but interestingly arranged. The concept originated from the image of Beeshma on his `death-bed of arrows'.

Interpret it in the `TJS George Context', a political statement that speaks about everyday corruption. Interpret it as you like. The art is the grammar of abstraction itself.

``I use whatever I have to create the images,'' says Natesh. But then he says his house is ``a junk yard full of such material.'' He uses tree trunks, bamboo sticks, steel tapes, newspaper clippings, wood, fibre glass, mirrors, cones, coloured paper, whatever else and the impulse of his imagination.

At Max Mueller Bhavan is a reflection of the State's water crisis set on stage. A fibreglass-cum-mirror shape is suspended over a circle of chopped tree trunks. On the glass is a blob that looks like Sri Lanka. The mirror reflects a smudged drop of water.

According to Natesh, the display, `Rain, Rain Come Again', shows a drop of water falling into a well. ``It talks about what we have done to water.''

We go to the third Installation, `The Beach', at the Lalit Kala Academy. Among the foliage and trash hangs a neck from a tree. There is no head. But Natesh says that unlike the previous two, this Installation is evolving. The neck made of bamboo shoots will soon have a head. Another set of bamboo shoots rises up a tree. It looks like the spine of a fish. There is a boat, a saw, an Independence-era lamp post and more. After a while, the `water drop' will join `The Beach' as will the `balloon'. But they would probably be something else in the context here.

``The fun in these visual metaphors is in its non- permanence and possibilities.'' These Installations are in open air, merging with the surroundings. So the audience is whoever is around. Do they understand these displays? ``No,'' shrugs Natesh, ``But because they don't understand, it stays in their mind. Next time they see it, they try to give it a meaning.''

The structures take new shapes, move to other places, or are just destroyed. Installation is essentially non-permanent. But Natesh has pictures of his work, in contradiction to the essence of his art.

Installation Art sponges his money. Vivan Sundaram of Delhi makes 35 lakh a display. Not Natesh. He saves through the year only to spend on his art. Sometimes, ``compromises are necessary, but you don't just compromise, you improvise.''

By Feroze Ahmed

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Section  : Features
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