MUMBAI.- N.S. Harsha's work has a rarity; his gallery exhibitions are few and far between. Indeed his work is laboured, his process slow. The fact is that Harsha has a rigorous practice. Recent museum exhibitions, biennales have left a footprint from 2016 to 2019 from the Kochi Biennale, Japan, Sydney Biennale in Sydney, Wales, and more recently in Hong Kong. In 2017 Mami Katoka chief curator from the Mori Museum in Tokyo curated 7 to 8 rooms filled with paintings, installations and sculptures of the last 25 years by the artist. This in itself is testimony to the tremendous repertoire of the artist.
Harsha comes back to his gallery, to Bombay, after a gap of 13 years! His last exhibition, Charming Nation was one of the last to be held in the old space of
Chemould at Jehangir in 2006. This exhibition therefore is much awaited by those who hold his work close to their heart. His band of followers include not only collectors, but artists too. Harsha is what one calls, "an artist's artist!"
Artists with large studios and a prolific practice have both the capacity and the will to produce work that is monumental in scale and large in the number of works.
This by no means diminishes voluminous practices - it is indeed a serious rigour that exists in contemporary art today. In NSH's case, attending to his new work has been the opposite end of the spectrum. While the artist has not shied away from "monumentality" in the past, in his oncoming exhibition, recent life there has been in fact a conscious steering away from scale, specificity of theme or large numbers of work. He has been sensitive about coming down to a very basic singularity of an idea within every specific work.
At the best of times, Harsha "hibernates" in Mysore. He is so rooted in his life, his studio, his local habitat that it is difficult to extract him out of it! You actually cannot take Mysore out of Harsha or Harsha out of Mysore! He knows his city backwards - he knows what daybreak brings and what to expect at each changing hour. There is a deep personal relationship with his surroundings, the people, and those he passes-by on an almost daily basis. In Harsha’s words, “I live my times and experience whole world from here”.
The result has been an artistic attitude that has transformed this relationship of observing actions, gestures of people around him to an empathetic rendering of painting - from the drawing, colour, to background.
There are of course the larger dreams, the artist dreams, as in the painting where The Voyager landing in his work, "The Agrarian Climb". This work exudes a strange relationship between a pumpkin and The Voyager 1! Why a pumpkin I asked? Harsha talks about 'blind faith' in relation to this particular vegetable - where this creeper plant has the ability to attach itself to just anything - be it metal, wood or even around the body of the voyager! In this painting two farmers are seen clasping to The Voyayer-entwined-to-creeper (which is a smaller replica of the same central image) while they attempt to climb steep slopes. This is where the painter's strokes reveal themselves. You don't actually see the steep slopes - instead you see the struggle of the couples' actions against slopes, perhaps imaginary slopes painted as if they exist.
I start with this work not because it is the most remarkable painting. In fact it is alarming how much liberty Harsha has taken with this (newfound freedom), killing any comfort of colour or form or picking colours that are unusual to his practice - magenta, purple and pink is as close to a riot in Harsha's oeuvre, or an uneven oval that doesn't even complete the circle, painted with thick almost messy lines. Here paint has life of its own where it is not trying to be an image or form but it is breathing it’s own colour next to painted forms
What happened to that flat surfaced, "expected beauty"? There is indeed an unexpectedness, as we see in the painting "Donkeys giving birth here and there". Once again the artist draws from real life experiences where he has frequently witnessed donkeys or cows giving birth. (The joys of small-town life that Harsha so revels in!) But once again the unexpected appears in the work: a big splash of red brush strokes which is then further layered with his (now signature) cosmos pattern. And then bang in the middle of this whirl of the red cosmos is a deep turquoise gash, ferreted into the centre of the painting. Within all this drama of colour and activity are patches where the humdrum of life continues.... segments of quotidian life of everyday activity with scenes of harvesting, yogic gestures, business going about in pink suits (!) and.... donkeys giving birth! Perhaps all in a day's work - the life of NS Harsha summed up in one single painting!
In the painting "A4rian time drifts" the term A4rian has been made up by the artist as a "homage" to the A-4 paper that has become synonymous with documentation, bureaucracy where reams of paper that are generated in order to give evidence to our existence, whether it is attaining a new passport, or opening a bank account, or during demonetisation to get cash from the ATM or the line to obtain a driving licence… etc. Harsha made it a point to stand in snaking queues that is normality to Indians where we spend hours patiently for any given purpose! When the artist stood in the one for his Aadhar Card (unique identification card), he became an even more vigilant observer of people's actions while they waited. The dystopian reality of patience, diligence in order that one's identity is "secured" as versus the paradox of that reality. The people in the queue are strange - a donkey's head on human body, or a three-headed woman's hand pushing deep into the skin of a mushroom-headed person! In this work, the artist talks about his "automatic flow of drawing" - "there was no plan, no intent of making this image - it simply happened" according to him. The painting is divided by a snaking blue river-like line - but that line is in fact riddled with A-4 paper, like a drifted curve - a curve that is created when water pushes back what it brings ashore on beaches - thus the title of the work.
Harsha says he is neither spiritual nor political; how then does one account for how his brush moves or how the concerns of identity that is the looming question before us within our own context of the nation? It is interesting that an artist who veers consciously away from politics is actually addressing the very questions that hang like swords over our heads.
Harsha's special relationship with those who he may encounter or those who are actively alive in his consciousness are painted almost with "divine-love" of his subjects. For instance - the vegetable seller in a small delicate painting titled, "The Beginning". For Harsha, the beginning is what he calls, "those starting with zero". "Zero, meaning nothing," I ask? "Not nothing," he says - zero for the artist is the start of all things. The zero is then exemplified in an electronic light bulb from which emits fairy lights that delicately adorn the aura of the vegetable seller. For Harsha the connect that he has in his depiction of this vendor is close an emotion of felt concern - and that is, this, that connects Harsha's audiences so deeply to his works.
A parallel stream that has been running through the artist's oeuvre is that of the cosmos. The cosmos painted in all its glory of shining stars against the black sky. While the cosmos has been present in his work as a background activity since the 90s, his first major painting in 2011 was, “Purapi jananam Punarapi Maranam” shown in multiple venues around the world, including for instance the second Kochi Muziris Biennale. The cosmos paintings have become integral to Harsha's work. The grand unattainable universe where we are but tiny specs, has become a language that several contemporary artists have incorporated within their practices - in the direction of the unknown as it were.
The newer cosmos paintings, painted on cotton cloth, hang simply as clothes over a clothes line. The single cloth has now extended to multiple layers of cloth - like clothes that hang outside middle-class homes whether in India, Hong Kong or Venice. The sight has become one that is ubiquitous within the landscape of the city. The exhibition will incorporate these works along with the painted canvasses. As part of the cosmos series is one grand sculpture: A 9 foot monkey with his bright gold open palm, and the right hand with its index finger pointing to the skies above. The monkey however has been rendered as a cosmos in itself, where the cosmos is monkey, and the monkey is cosmos! The sculpted monkey made with fiberglass - usually a material that gives itself away - is slow revealing in this work. The skin folds resemble the treatment one can achieve through bronze. The skin of the animal has been crafted with fiberglass paint to intonate its every muscle, from the leg to it's foot - the muscles holding the strength of the body. This strange and beautiful monkey is possibly the highest point of drama in this otherwise very quiet exhibition!
recent life by NS Harsha is a slow discovery - of oneself, of life, of drawing, and most of all the richness of painting.
