Puneet Kaushik’s works hung from corners of the wall — the conceptualisations were so gently transitory in tone. In a handmade set of wires, wittily perched with little blobs that looked like biological bric a brac, you thought you were reading a time sensitive scroll, feeding signals to a matrix that’s attached to the tenor of timelessness. For all its effort, this thing spoke with the quietest of voices, just sitting an waiting to be noticed. While this work, made of steel, cotton, led, light and latex, has a gossamer feel, the second installation speaks of red light and pouring rain.
Two years ago, he had a series with the colour pink. This phase is a metaphor of deeper intonations. Of that he said: “Two years ago, the colour pink meant many things to me… the gay pink, the Nazi soldiers and the free spirit. I was reacting to almost having ‘pink in my veins’.” Last year, the catalyst that fascinated the young designer-artist was the colour red. He explains: “I am onto the next stage of life’s consciousness. From the free-spirited pink, I have moved on to the full-bodied red that represents full-on passion for life.” Ask him if red also symbolises for him motifs from society as had pink for AIDS and Nazi soldiers, he confirms with a nod. “Red is all around us. A greater religious and socio-political symbolism can be understood through this colour. Its manifestations are in form of sindoor, tilak, aalta etc.”
Look closer at this work and it’s a kind of geeky Dr Frankenstein thought in which Puneet has assembled each work — it makes you think of electronic cast-offs and junked hardware, leaving the messy configurations and their straining labour — entirely exposed to modern day annotations. The matrix-like weave of the steel could look like an ugly misfit or a chaos of intense beauty depending on how you respond — but the construct of cocooned connotations seem desperate to express themselves. Controlled by a clunky character of the red light pouring through, there is a tree-like structure that looks more like dripping of thoughts, and you think of the plunking rudimentary rhythms of the sense of an inner being. The steel, meshed in feel, makes you want to think that you are the outsider who should offer encouragement in terms of an endorsement of understanding.
Puneet’s handling of the large device powered by the running loop of beaded meshed in striations solicits mostly a silent bearing; it plays like an outsider in a world of many mixed in marvels. Incidentally, in an age of slick iPhones, Puneet also demonstrates the charms of mechanics — obsessions that are obnoxious as well as the wisdom of blending the artful for being awkward.
The power of his sensibility lies in his ability to combine the public spectacle of millennium mixed-style of happenings that are able to delight as well as be defined by their own brand of decadence. In some ways, these installations present a stage that speaks of a semi-scripted metallic drama where small elements of nature dance, writhe, and emote while the artist as an astute observer sculpts and sketches the reaches of his fascination and fantasy.
Mostly abstracted and tendril-like in stretch and structure, these installations suggest that Puneet as an artist is somewhat enthralled by improvisation. And his thread-like mesmeric lines are manically impulsive; they barely go a fragment of an inch without detouring. Short, jagged strokes, tiny loops, and quick arcs make jittery, skeletal outlines of steel and latex into distorted natural forms. Haunting daubs of reds wrap the frames with translucent skin while also conveying the blur of movement. Puneet loves motion in thought even as he explores the being within and as the hand-made steel kicks up successive positions of recurring wall-like fields, it also pays homage to futurist studies in the dynamism of steel as a medium to discover.
What entices is a sense of sweet liberation in creating, perhaps also hinting at another kind of artistic and cultural revolution. At Gallery Beyond, this show brings thought to artistic insight.