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Review
Voice of Objects
‘Objective Voice,’ the solo show of George Martin P.J., was held at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi recently. Art writer John Xaviers reviews the nuances of the show.
George Martin has total control over the medium. He is at his best in three dimensional space and form which he most commonly expresses in fibreglass. Meanwhile, the foundation of his skill set is evident in his drawings and paintings. The colours and shapes that George Martin uses borrow from and comment on the most contemporary visuality of our times. A George Martin canvas reminds me of a Damien Hirst spin painting animating on an Anish Kapoor reflective surface in broken continuity clues towards the familiarity of the subliminal city. Even a two dimensional work by George Martin is proposing a three dimensional manifestation.
’Objective Voice,’ which was on view in Vadehra Gallery from October 1 to 31, 2009 was a confirmation of how George Martin's technique in three dimensionality and colour has given him an identity and uniqueness. In the show, there were multimedia installation that primarily made use of fibreglass sculptures, steel, neon bulbs and even rice. Besides the installations that occupied whole rooms in the gallery space, there were free hand drawings on paper that reminds me of anime language for its surreality. These black ink on white paper freehand drawings are illuminated with blocks of brilliant colours like lemon green, hot pink, red, magenta on carefully chosen shapes.
One of the fibreglass sculptures titled ‘Objective Voice,’ consisted of a huge stiletto in lemon green colour, with magenta-coloured fruit shapes on them. There is a red pot from which a black fabric is flowing out. It is from this work that the name of the show is derived. Talking about the title of the show, ‘Objective Voice,’ is the artist claiming that his voice is objective as if in a scientific truth claim? Or is the artist suspending his subjectivity in the title? Perhaps it is about making objects and allowing them to voice through their object hood.
If that is the case, then the objecthood of the sculptures takes on importance. In order to analyse the objecthood of the sculpture, I would like to look specifically at the work ‘Crude Sanctum.’ In this multimedia installation composed of separate objects that carefully and skillfully occupies a full room in the gallery, like the fibreglass purple sculptures of a man shrouded in big fabric allowing only a walking stick to be seen of him and a coyote, a circular wall piece with orange skulls around a circle mirror and orange neon text signifying destruction. This multimedia installation brings to sculptural life the 1974 Action Art by Joseph Beuys titled ‘I love America, America loves Me.’ This performance was Joseph Beuys’ protest against Vietnam war in which he went to America to perform but did not see or touch the American land through being shrouded in felt from his arrival flight to the gallery to the departure flight. It is amazing how after 35 years, an artist who is around 35 is giving three dimensional life to this performance. It is evident how passionately the young artist has studied and absorbed the Joseph Beuys image which would have been accessible only in the form of photographs. Besides a technical transfer of a two-dimensional photograph to a three-dimensional fibreglass, there is a transference of reverential energy here. But what is beyond comprehension is the loss of surface quality in this act of transference, in that the rough ‘felt’ surface which is so very associated with Joseph Beuys is lost in translation to a very shiny glossy fibreglass purple, one of the trendiest colours of the year, which is co-incidentally the colour of India Art Summit as well.
The George Martin show has to be seen in the context of the time in which it was on view. It opened on October 1, hot on the heels of India Art Summit 09, New Delhi at a time, when Indian art economy is showing signs of recovery from a speculated recession that could have affected mid-career artists. The choice of materials and images by the artist assumes importance. In a way, the materiality of art-making is symptomatic of an urge to catch the attention of the neo-bourgeoisie who is slowly familiarising themselves with contemporary art. Imagine a glossy larger-than-life purple humanoid in the living room of a nouveau riche apartment aspiring to be culturally literate. When it is loaded with art historical information, rendered by one of the youngest exciting artists of the nation, it assumes cultural capital value in a certain segment of the ‘booming’ economy. Here, the young artist is multi-tasking, through anticipating a cultural taste for the nouveau riche, improving upon the skill-sets on the three dimensional surface, paying homage to the Twentieth Century Action Art which had political interventionist functions and most importantly, expressing deep respect and love for a Twentieth Century ‘great’ artist. It is important to wait and see, how the objects and voices transform over time in such a way that the artist not only draws from industrial material but the artist also intervenes in the financial culture, emphatically.
(John Xaviers is a Delhi-based art writer, currently doing his Ph.D. in Art History from School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is working as the Assistant Curator at Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi. Email: johnofcochin@gmail.com)
