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Shocking! But that's the idea
Gitanjali Dang
I feel like I am introducing my own personality into the game," announces a young man partic­ipating in the World Cyber Games (WCG) 2006 in a television teaser for the same. This naively uttered sentiment has deep repercussions.

It is the overarching presence of the virtuality conundrum that Sanjeev Khandekar and Vaishali Narkar choose to examine in Tits n Clits n Elephant Dick (Part I), the chosen title for their exhibition of paintings, sculptures and installa­tion. Investing their personalities into their preferred virtual reality the gamers of present will in time unwittingly lose themselves to their virtual selves, committed to the excesses of violence and other debaucheries.

"When your inbox is spammed with emails from an assortment of unseemly websites this or some­thing akin to this is what the sub­ject line will read. It is jarring and I wanted the title of the exhibition to be reflective of the same," says artist Sanjeev Khandekar of, Tits n Clits n Elephant Dick (Part I).

Virtuality, however, is just one of the many entry points that the viewer can access to enter the labyrinthine world that draws to­gether the ostensibly disparate strands - of the online gaming culture, specifically Second Life and Sociolotron SM, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir deliberations on necessary love and contingent love, the Realdoll (a life-size sex doll) and spam mail. Last year Khandekar's installa­tions All that I Wanna Do and La Peau de Chagrin (who is afraid of the shrinking skin...!) addressed the subject of rabid commodification. The present project is an extension of the same in that it is an examina­tion of the various and persistent dualities that insidiously channel themselves into our lives.

Within the space of the gallery the artists have created an atmos­phere that is unequivocal in the challenge it is setting forth before its viewer. The challenge being the realisation of this other confronta­tional realm.

 · At The Jehangir Art Gallery,
 · Kala Ghoda, till August 6.
 · 11 am to 7pm.
Hindustan Times, Style Week end