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Quote by Dale Chihuly
MAP THE TRAIL: a children’s workshop
An Art1st Foundation Workshop in collaboration with Bhubaneshwar Art Trail
The crossroads at the beginning of the Bindu Sagar Road instantly became our adda. We were there at 8am on the first day, ready to explore. Priyam found fascination in the life that buzzed on the road that led around the block and back to the sea green Kedarnath library. Likla was drawn to the solitude of the Uttareshwar temple courtyard that rested by the lake. And thus, left and right, the two paths were drawn.
The sessions began with a few quick activities that broke the ice and brought the children into the space. A clapping game involved their complete attention and an observation exercise prepared them for how to look for details in the journey they were about to undertake.
As the two groups began to walk, accompanied by an Art1st Facilitator, a Bhubaneswar Art Trail Volunteer and a schoolteacher. Though the sun beat down on our heads, each participant was engrossed. With a pencil in hand they sketched or wrote down what caught their attention on the trail. For some of the children it was the temple structures, for others it was the familiarity of names, others yet were drawn to the landmarks and one girl was drawn to the trees that claimed homes along the trails. When we approached the paintings of Subrat Kumar Behera in juxtaposition with the age-old temple structures, there were wows all around.
Upon returning to the workshop area, the young cartographers were presented with an array of art material: oil pastels, sketch pens, poster paints, markers, clay, colorful strings, tinted sheets and cartridge paper. They were free to make use of any of these to represent their experience on the trail. A few of the children wanted everything while others were selectively aware of what they wanted to use.
When they sat down to create they were posed with yet another challenge. They couldn’t use some of the conventional approaches to starting an art piece, so, no border, no marker outlines, no erasers and no rulers. Confusion abounded, but only momentarily. They revaluated and quickly got to work. It is remarkable how each one knew exactly what they wanted to create without worrying too much about what their friends were making.
Their artwork is now on display at Guajhar on the Bhubaneshwar Art Trail. Can you make out which route they took?
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The Earthiness of Vipul Kumar’s Ceramic Sculptures
Ankush Arora
The ceramic works of Jaipur-based artist Vipul Kumar, currently on view at Delhi’s Threshold Gallery, demonstrate a strong sense of the Earth element, while exploring the turbulent relationship between humans, as a profligate race, and Nature, as a depleting yet bountiful force.
Gallery View. Picture Courtesy: Threshold Gallery
Kumar’s ‘Earth Diaries’, as the show is titled, engage with two materials – stoneware and porcelain, which are different types of ceramics. Sculpted into dissimilar shapes and forms, his exhibits embody decay and doom, palpable through cracks and lava-like formations coiling over the objects. The artist, a student of fine arts at Benaras Hindu University, attributes his experimentation with ceramic art to his brother Kesarinandan, who runs a studio in Delhi. Prior to that, he was trained under famous sculptor Balbir Singh Katt, known for his adept use of marble and wood materials on a large scale.
As a trained stone sculptor, Kumar said he began with geometrical, rigid forms that found a new visual vocabulary in the ceramic medium. Maintaining the rigidity of his stone sculptures, his has used the delicacy and richness of clay and porcelain materials to enhance his artistic practice—an experimentation that has preoccupied him for the past ten years. The exhibition at Threshold Gallery highlights his foray into this new medium, that also doubles up as a platform to voice his concerns about the effects of climate change. It’s a concern that has shaped his life too, having left Delhi to setup a ceramic studio in Bhaislana, so “he could breathe better”.
Cheraweti Stoneware, 49x46x16 inches, 2018. Picture Courtesy: Threshold Gallery
At the entrance of the Threshold Gallery is placed a big slab-like sculpture, titled “Cheraweti”, believed to be a Sanskrit word from a Hindu scripture, that roughly translates into “chalte chalo” or keeping moving. The sculpture’s powerful visual imagery and an unmistakable ‘ancient’ quality set the tone for the show. Depicting the only human form in the entire exhibition, the sculpture invokes divinity as an omnipresence witness to the birth of civilization and eventual degradation, which is characterized by termite-like cavities.
Global Warming II. Porcelain 13×11.5×11, 2010. Picture Courtesy: Threshold Gallery
The theme of deterioration extends into other exhibits: in “Nature’s Signature”, for example, the dull green protrusions and cavities acquire an expanded form; an “Untitled” window-like installation shows it is slowly being consumed by the same termite hillocks; and the “Global Warming II” sculpture shows volcanic eruptions in an increasingly altering environment. (An expanded version of Kumar’s “Nature’s Signature” sculpture has been mounted at the Indian Ceramics Triennale in Jaipur, a first-of-its kind homegrown initiative that acknowledges the finest experimentations in Indian and overseas contemporary ceramic art.)
Nature’s Signature, Stoneware, 168x120x65 cm. Picture Courtesy: Indian Ceramics Triennale.
Adding to the symbolism of humans corroding nature’s largesse is the sight of consumerism and capitalism depicted in “Untitled-II” object at the Delhi show. Formidable and fragile at the same time, the comparatively smaller sculpture in the collection is an ironical reference to the architectural grandeur of today’s day and age.
Humans, the exhibition shows, are not all that powerful despite their extractive tendencies: we are governed by “astral phenomena” or zodiac signs (Untitled Mural) and the concept of the movement of time (Jantar Mantar-II), inferring to the infinitesimal nature of human existence.
Jantar Mantar. Stoneware. Woodfired 15x24x12 inches. Picture Courtesy: Threshold Gallery
The intense visual imagery of these exhibits takes a break when you notice these 15 objects. Playful and organic, this installation doesn’t seem to be conveying a moral tone, unlike the rest of the collection. On closer look, it turns out that other materials such as chips, glass, bangles and even husk have been added to these objects, giving them a peculiar ornamental quality.
Seen together, the exhibition does not confirm to the common ideas of art being necessarily beautiful or pleasing. Instead, the show is about Kumar’s reflections on the prevailing ugliness in the world. Working out of his large ceramic studio in Bhaislana (which is also the site of black marble mines), the artist is one of the handful of Indian practitioners to have earned the reputation of elevating “the humble pot or clay sculpture to the status of high art”.
One of the oldest human inventions, ceramics have, for long, been identified as a traditional, artisan-based craft for industrial, functional, ritual/temple, and architectural purposes. Even though ceramic art has witnessed renewed interest among artists to experiment with multiple techniques and concepts in the medium, a historical gap has been noted in terms of the ‘stepchild’ status given to ceramics when compared with painting or sculpture.
3 Untitled Mural, Poreclain, 120×48,14 in (40 pieces each 10×10 in side view) and An Accident. Picture Courtesy: Threshold Gallery
Kumar was born in Sitamarhi in the state of Bihar, which has a centuries-old history of ceramics. But he considers himself to be primarily a sculptor, who happens to work in the ceramics medium. And yet, a conversation with him reveals how his own brother, a trained ceramist, often felt he was just a “kumhar”(a potter), instead of being a visual artist.
Sharing this insight into the existing barriers within the art market, Kumar said: “There seems to be a ‘class distinction’ in painting, graphics, sculpture and pottery. I have tried to use ceramic as a material to shake up the image of ceramic craft, transform it into the form of sculpture and elevate its status in contemporary art”.
‘Earth Diaries’ is open for public viewing at Threshold Gallery until October 27, 2018.
Ankush began his career as a journalist in 2008, and has since covered multiple stints in print, television and digital media in India. In 2016, he took up a communications and outreach assignment for an American social innovation organisation, which works with the Tata Trusts in India. He is currently working, in Delhi, as a media publicist for art practitioners. He tweets @artandculturediary, and shares his photography on Instagram.
Quote by Henri Matisse
When Art Transcends Human Creativity
Delhi-based Nature Morte Gallery’s recent exhibition, ‘Gradient Descent’, seeks to establish artificial intelligence as a new genre of contemporary art-making
Ankush Arora
What happens when a statistician and an artist decide to create a new form of art? The outcome is an experimental initiative for artists and technologies of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI) to reimagine creativity in contemporary art practices, while establishing a collaborative human-machine relationship. That is the stated goal of ‘64/1’, the Bengaluru-based art curation and research collective founded by brothers Karthik Kalyanaraman, whose interest in visual arts predates his career as an economist, and Raghava KK, a multidisciplinary artist known for creating an art book for children on the iPad.
And what happens when a gallerist realises that AI (broadly, the ability of machines to replicate human intelligence) is slowly beginning to shape the way we access technology? The result, this time, is a startling collection of seven exhibits and installations, made entirely by AI algorithms (or computer codes), establishing AI as a new medium to make art. This is a rare show curated by an Indian art gallery, joining an emerging movement of AI-based art in other parts of the world.
Imaginary Landscape, 2018, Nao Tokui. Courtesy: Nature Morte, Delhi
Featuring mixed-media elements like AI-generated sounds, videos and images, the exhibition at Delhi’s Nature Morte Gallery debates the common apprehension that technologies like AI could make human labour or creativity redundant. Instead, human expression in art can be reinvented by technology as a combination of man and machine, the exhibition ‘Gradient Descent’ demonstrates, even though different forms of human labour are being replaced. The exhibition’s six overseas artists and one Bengaluru-based practitioner have trained AI networks to produce the final artworks by exposing them to multiple audio-visual materials.
Here are excerpts from a conversation with Karthik, who taught econometrics in the UK and US for about four years, before setting up his art curation and research collective. He has curated this exhibition with Raghava, who began his career in art as a cartoonist, moved to painting and simultaneously began experimenting with digital processing and programming tools to create art.
How did the two of you get interested in AI art?
We were both obsessed with art and somewhat frustrated with the lack of deep engagement of artists with what we thought are issues of the future: the rise of AI as a symbol of continuing labour replacement by technology and climate change. So it was natural for us to start looking for artists who were engaged with AI.
What does the title of your show, ‘Gradient Descent’, mean?
It’s a pun. ‘Gradient Descent’ is the name for a particular mathematical (optimization) routine that the AI algorithm performs in order to learn. At the same time, we want to imply that there is a gradient, a continuum, between man and machine.
Has your show, in any way, changed perceptions towards AI art in India?
I think most people in the art world did not really realize the developments made by AI art, so it was a bit of a surprise for them. So I’m not sure that it has changed perceptions, because I think initially there was a huge lack of awareness. But I think now we have definitely seen younger artists become more interested in using AI as a tool. As for people in the tech world, our hope is that they have started to realize that their world intersects with the art world in interesting ways and will want to experiment with cross-overs.
Perception Engines, Tom White. Courtesy: Nature Morte, Delhi.
How is the AI art market in India shaping up?
The potential is huge. But the truth is there are very very few artists truly engaged with AI in India, despite the fact that the kind of AI needed to create interesting images is actually taught in computer science departments like say, at Ashoka University. This is because of the wariness with which our art schools still regard this media art space. The challenges are not technical. We have the technology. The challenges are in getting more members of the art world (art school faculty, students, critics, curators) to engage with this space.
Your show is dominated by international artists, with only one Indian artist from Bengaluru. Did you intend to make it a global show or does India not have too many AI artists?
Both. It was a pioneering show globally too: the first time a mainstream art gallery organized such a show in the world. So we wanted it to be global. As for India, after intense search we only found a few artists in this space and of them only Harshit Agrawal was doing stuff that was both at the forefront of technology and conceptually interesting.
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Algorithm, Harshit Agrawal. Courtesy: Nature Morte, Delhi.
It appears that while talking about AI-based art, the medium takes the centerstage, somewhat marginalising the actual theme of artworks. And that has also happened in the way your exhibition has been received. Is that problematic or even unfair?
Very much so! I think because of the novelty value of this kind of show, purely the ‘AI’ part is getting stressed. We see this globally too: for instance the piece auctioned off by Christie’s is really quite unoriginal and has been done by other AI artists, so they are primarily selling as made my AI, creating a kind of idiotic mystique around the whole field. The truth is the human artists have gone nowhere! In a group show like ours, you could really see the aesthetic diversity of the artwork and this stems mainly from human decisions, because all the artists are starting out with more or less the same raw algorithm.
The human artist designs the concept, the human artist trains the machine in a specific visual style, the human artist curates the output. So then whole completely produced by AI idea is a myth. So yes, it is unfair.
In India, how are you planning to keep the conversation going regarding AI work?
We are in the initial stages of first moving the show to a couple of other cities. We would love to be able to create an outreach to art schools and engage young artists with the art of the future. Another idea was to create a lab that would provide the resources for young artists to engage with this stuff.
Self-Portrait, Mario Klingemann. Courtesy: Nature Morte
According to the exhibition, AI art is just two years old. How did you arrive at this timeline? We do know that artists have experimented with the idea of creating art independent of humans for more than 50 years.
In a sense you can say (French modernist) Marcel Duchamp kicked off that process with his readymades so I would date it even earlier. But the idea that an image can be made, where one has no control at all over the final look of the image, where the machine is not given any procedure or recipe for creating images, but is only fed a whole lot of examples to learn from, is very new.
The main idea for allowing a machine to generate an image, pixel by pixel, came in 2014 with the publishing of the paper on Generative Adversarial Networks by Ian Goodfellow and co-authors. Before that there was some experimentation with things like style transfer and Google DeepDream, but these were not as aesthetically interesting to artists because of their limited image-making capabilities.
‘Gradient Descent’ concluded at Nature Morte Gallery, Delhi, on September 15, 2018.
Ankush began his career as a journalist in 2008, and has since covered multiple stints in print, television and digital media in India. In 2016, he took up a communications and outreach assignment for an American social innovation organisation, which works with the Tata Trusts in India. He is currently working, in Delhi, as a media publicist for art practitioners. He tweets @artandculturediary, and shares his photography on Instagram.
