There is something very endearingly straightforward about classical arts — be it performing or visual arts. What you see is what you get and the refined nuances are a fabulous celebration of the distillation. The strict codification too has a lot to do with this scenario. In contemporary visual arts, there is still a huge expanse of grey area that is still in search of a language that it can command as its very own.
I feel that contemporary arts are passing through a phase of transition, where in symbols, metaphors are being developed and in language terms, words and contexts are being found to define what is often indefinable. But surely this floundering will eventually result in the creation of forms that will be regional in their rootedness and universal in outreach as is evident as artists experiment with form and styles. This week there are four such prime exhibitions that opened that are diverse in their thought and presentation, but the quest is evident: Solo shows by Saba Hasan, Surinder Kaur, K.K. Gandhi and Abhinav Chowbey.
Gandhi captures with amazing singularity of purpose the most important part of the plethora of images that the mind’s eye is inundated with. His essential mindscape is the stunning beauty of Kashmir, but here too he pares it down to the basic minimum of this inherent simplicity expressed with deep emotion and incredible dexterity.
One can almost reach out and touch grass and be a part of the rolling meadows. Young Abhinav on the other hand, uses a colour palette that is vibrantly rural Indian in context, but his deft handling is far from rural. It smacks of a highly urbane and trained mind as he dips into memories from another time and traverses several spaces with ease.
Saba continues to touch upon the possibilities, which often transcend our cognitive powers and leave us uncertain; aware of multiple interpretations, yet doubtful of the real meaning, often tentative and even afraid. The text has now acquired another dimension as in some works she has used the whole book as material to express herself. Books are tied up, locked away, fossilised, cut up, burnt, wrapped and some embalmed for posterity. The intention is to raise doubts concerning what commonly passes as knowledge or is considered to be the absolute truth; the works suggest fragility and only hint towards what is worth preserving in the worn out repository of human ideas and emotions. Her main concern, is to go beyond the accepted, the known and to explore fresh horizons in art.
Throughout the history of India, the arts have been interwoven with societal existence.
Women have and continue to play an integral role in the realisation of the human creative modus. From the rural hinterlands and regional dispersion of diverse, yet interlinked folk and tribal art forms, to the burgeoning, bustling metropolises of the modern Bharat, female practitioners and artists glean the inter-nexus of the traditional and contemporary fusion of the visual arts.
There’s often a very crucial paradox that needs to be considered in this very context of painting a world with water colours. It emanates from the fact that most contemporary artists feel that they are suffering from a void with a hereditary realistic marriage of obviousness to beauty. But for Surinder Kaur, and the abstractionist that she is, there’s usefulness and pleasure in making a framed cohesive creation.
A contemporary artist is often tempted to turn the watercolour to moorings at the risk of bordering on the sublimely impractical and beauty that is independent of any purpose.
And yet, synonymous are the sensible demands that continue to be thrust on the artist, so that such an exercise can be made a promise of intent.
For in the case of women, art and craft are not separate entities, and the collective consciousness merges with that of the individual to bring out universal concerns. It becomes the unifying principle within the art historical tradition, where upon the hitherto failure to acknowledge the pivotal component and contribution by women artists of all definitions has been and shall continue to be undermined.

Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist