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Artists plan the City
Tushar Joag and Sanjeev Khandekar, contemporary artists, make incisive observations about the urban landscape with their most recent paintings and installations says Saryu Doshi, the authority on Indian miniatures, who has served as Hon Director of the NGMA
   
Currently on show, are two exhibitions in which the artist uses his artistic expression to voice his concerns. In the exhibition Willing Suspension, Tushar Joag seeks to make an intervention in the urban condition of the metropolis of Mumbai with it’s teeming millions and mount­ing problems.
   
Owing to Mumbai's geography, and its lopsided development in the last few decades, millions of people have to travel by train from their homes in the north to their workplaces in the south. The overcrowded trains leave many commuters with no choice but to hang outside the train from window bars or perch precariously on footboards -jeopardizing their lives.

To lessen the dangers to life and limb, Tushar's art works suggest solu­tions and strategies with which to negotiate the hazards. He has devised the 'Foot Swivel' enabling a commuter to swing away from the door while pas­sengers move in and out of a compart­ment and to swing back when the train begins to move. The 'Spidy Handles' attached to the external walls of the train will offer a firmer grip to hang­ing passengers.

And lastly, in the 'Locomotion Course' the artist has streamlined passenger entry and exit into a choreographed movement of skilled footwork.
 
Of course, these are not solutions: nobody should be subjected to such travails while traveling. In a satirical way, the artist has nudged our collective conscience. According to him, his artwork carries within itself "a tautologi­cal reference to the problem rather than a solution to it. It is like telling a lie to cover up a lie." While Tushar Joag assumes the role of an interventionist, Sanjeev Khandekar, a Marathi poet and writer, through his twin installations (on view at two separate venues simul­taneously), makes a trenchant com­ment on our society and its degenerat­ing values. A darkened space, sugges­tive of a gallery within a gallery cre­ates multiple realities through the use of mirrors. The installation All That I Wanna Do covers the floor, the roof and the wall. The artist elaborates on the 'wanna be" phenomenon in today's world, the obsession with luxurious lifestyle and courting media attention. According to the artist these attitudes stem from globalisation - from the corporatisation of the world. Multinational organisations have no country, no culture - - their only mantra is 'profit'. Their behavior is predatory Their ruthlessness is por­trayed by the raised torso-less fiber­glass leg. The reference is to Lord Vishnu who in his Vamana Avatar, trampled on the asura King Bali.
   
Again, drawing upon Indian myths the double installation Sugar Cane Juice Centre Gokul Milk Centre con­sists of a contraption of desirable mod­ern objects, which squeeze out jeweled body fluid. Lost in its maze of mechan­ical and technological innards are numerous tiny figures of Krishna. It takes a magnifying glass to locate the Divine One who holds the universe within himself.

The incisive comment on con­sumerism is made through the dis­membered super-sized fiberglass organs of the digestive system hanging from the ceiling and lit from within like lamps. And abetting this love for lucre is the stock market ticker-tape around the gallery. At various levels, and through different motifs the artist investigates the complex constructs of Indian society in an equally dramatic extension of this installation at the Pundole Art Gallery La Peau de Chagrin, the artist bemoans the fall of the last bastion — the world of artistic endeavors - to commercial forces. Has the rot devoured the soul?
Interestingly the artist uses the qual­ities of glamour and slickness to decry decadence.

- Willing Suspension by Tushar Joag-At the Gallery Chemould till 26 August 10.30 a.m. - 6.30p.m.
  (Sundays closed)
- All that I wanna do by Sanjeev Khandekar- At Museum Art Gallery, Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda - 9-14   August.
- La Peau De Chagrin by Sanjeev Khandekar - At Pundole Art Gallery, till 24 August. 10.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m.  (Open all days except Sundays and pub­lic holidays).
DNA, August 14th 2005