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‘Another
Geography’
"Travel is fatal to prejudice,
bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these
accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be
acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
-- Mark Twain,
The Innocents
Abroad (1869)
Mukesh Sharma explores the
diachronic issue of displacement within human geographies in one or many
cultures, within gender, within the self. From Jaipur to Mexico, across the
great borders of cross cultural landscapes, Mukesh Sharma’s paintings continue a
dialogue within a socio-political context that addresses luminal spaces. His
paintings foreground the notion that the traveller is in a state of 'in
betweens', an idea which finds its voice also in the virtual world.
The paintings signify a process
that begins with the "exodus" from one place to another condition either
willingly or unwillingly, physically or spiritually.
Displacement, the cultural
construction of personhood in social stratification, comfort, conformation and
confinement are some of the subject matters that Mukesh wishes to bring about in
his work.
He places his practice at the
heart of the main issues of contemporary culture through a critical trajectory.
He uses his knowledge of art against all odds -- as an instrument of cultural
survival.
The vibrancy of colours are
symptomatic of the land he lives in and the paintings are a doppleganger of his
cultural background. In the art works is the duality of the received tradition
and the encountered tradition. He uses the language of the popular to inform the
viewer of social consciousness of the terrain he walks upon.
Mukesh’s compositions are crowded
with people, yet there seems to be no one in them. The works are figurative and
focus on the negotiation between representation and abstraction. Both culturally
and geographically, he blends the vocabularies of art from his journeys in
India, Australia and Mexico.
All of his work is made in direct
relationship to the spatial qualities of the ground they are painted on. Each
art work has resulted from the ongoing investigations into how personal and
cultural meanings are formed and expressed. He has a strong interest in
counter-cultures and the way they are visually represented. From the political
to the recreational the painting becomes the signifier of self-determination and
a development of aesthetics in tune with the aspirational.
The landscape paintings with
varied styles, with humans, tourist memorabilia, symbols of material and
artificial culture wrestle with each other. Infusing a rare vitality into the
large acrylic canvases.
He does not consider painting in
terms of representing the object world or of social values. However his attempt
through his art is also to be part of nature, not imitating it, but stimulating
it. He believes that painting should be pure, since it has its own life,
autonomous and not an illustration.
Across the geographical
boundaries, Mukesh strongly believes in sensing a similarity in the difference,
seeing the way things may fit together, work in harmony or contribute towards
building a dialogue.
Dr.
Alka Pande
Curator
Spring 2007
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