Event
Bending the Wire: Beyond the Linear
Bending the Wire: Beyond the Linear
Puneet Kaushik is
a Delhi based artist. Having studied, lived and worked at Berkeley, California,
USA for almost a decade, he returned home to Delhi with sentiments and nostalgia
of sinking roots within his cultural milieu. His installations are three
dimensional sculptures that negate normative definition. The works are either
crocheted or woven with very fine steel wire mesh and for a change latex rubber
and Faux fur. As an expansive versatile medium it is premised on the condition
of interaction, stimulating dialogues or another response with the spectator.
Puneet in his installations successfully has been driven by a single idea or
concept, injecting an element of exploration, with materials offering their own
guiding agency; and in this respect he marks a posture of difference.
In his last show,
the concept of 'Germination' foregrounds sinking roots and is a liminal
phenomenon - a beginning of a journey which breaks the rigors of silence for
change and transformation. The metaphor indicates germination or
externalization of inner energies both positive and negative. And the
visualization of such abstract feelings is threaded through engagement with the
medium of installation and using craft processes, which also enables Puneet to
foreground traditions via contemporary materials as stainless steel. In his
works, the sense of presence and the body in relation to human experience was
investigated.
In the present
show, the body per se is subverted but the intervention with it is to explore
his concept which involves the process of life; which his art metaphorically
redefines. For instance, in a work, the crocheted forms with long lengths of
latex rubber hang from the ceiling, which create an enigma, the mystery of the
'self' as it goes through thorny and problematic conditions when uprooted from
its comfort zone and forced to take roots elsewhere. His many forms have
emerged through his experiences by looking at the latter in a holistic manner
in order to recognise it as a process that bridge individuals and the world.
According to Merleau-Ponty, the human body is an expressive space which
contributes to the significance of personal actions. The body is also the
origin of expressive movement, and is a medium for perception of the world.
Bodily experience gives perception a meaning beyond that established simply by
thought.
This sense of
expressive body spatiality has been worked through by Puneet with his material.
Phenomenologically, his sculpted crocheted form, invites spectators to touch,
feel and hence create dialogue with it. That his forms are not dense; rather
contain interlocking spaces, with a particular silence found in the spaces
between forms creating a dialectics of visual pattern, wrought by the craft
process of weaving and crochet.
Puneet Kaushik