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Exploring intimate spaces
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Roopashree's works translocate a real-life familial set-up to the gallery
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Roopashree's exhibition, Intimate Interiors: Beyond the Dialectic of Real and Imaginary, which was on at Shanti Road Studio/Gallery, took on an interesting façade, trying to translocate a real-life familial set up into a gallery environment.
As indicated in the catalogue, "Roopa telecasts her immediate surrounding to the external world to which a domestic interior is passé... (The display) is meant to bring in the viewer's gaze within the breathing range of the artist's actual and imaginary circumstance, only to prove that both are the same."
The exhibition provided a clue to the possible situations faced by the artist in her daily routine. In one of the works, she painted an undressing woman in the vicinity of a mammoth seashell, its internal strata layered by aggressive lines and colours to underscore the protagonist's attempt to break away from emotional captivity. In another image (self-portrait?), the woman is surrounded by tall sculptural figurines, her own posture and expression betraying a state of tension and uncertainty. If such paintings presented a sense internal gazing, there were other instances where her relationship (or lack of it) with her surrounding came to the fore. In a stark image, two female figures (twins?) display their alluring forms but fail to attract the attention of a strongly built male. In the background, the picture of a couple straining to reach out to one another seems to tell its own tale.
Among the better paintings on display was one of a woman in see-through attire, covered and yet entirely naked. In the small-format works, Roopashree employed the symbol of unoccupied chair(s) to effectively highlight a feeling of emptiness. While one could relate to the artist's enterprise of self-analysis and expression, the artificial setting and some of the simulated images presented a rather skewed perspective of her predicament and paradoxes. The positioning of the paintings and other paraphernalia gave a theatrical feel, far removed from a cluttered, middle-class, joint family atmosphere it was supposed to imply. Also, the signs of a domestic muddle ought to have been better structured, focused and evocatively presented. Despite these shortcomings, Roopashree's effort is worth applauding.
ATHREYA
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