Passage to India II

25 March 2009

Jitish Kallat, Sweatopia 1, 2008
Copyright: Jitish Kallat, 2008
Courtesy: The Frank Cohen Collection

“You can ask me anything you like but I don’t know much,” twinkles the very affable Frank Cohen. We are standing in his lock-up garage-cum-exhibition space on a Wolverhampton industrial estate taking in a small selection of his contemporary Indian art collection. Cohen cuts a dash – all softly coiffed barnet and discreet Japanese tailoring that it’s safe to guess cover a steely core. For this former DIY-store company head is, alongside Charles Saatchi, one of the UK’s biggest contemporary art collectors. Cohen began collecting Modern British works in 1972 (he has a copy of every auction catalogue published since) and though known for his support of the Brit artists in the late Eighties holds an example of pretty much contemporary everything in his large stash: from design-art pieces by the Campana Brothers and Tord Boontje to paintings by Clare Woods and Beijing’s Feng Zhengjie.

David Thorp, formerly of the South London Gallery and the Henry Moore Foundation, curates all shows here and quite rightly with this, the second of a two-part exhibition, has opted to show a few key pieces by leading Indian artists rather than try and represent what they have in storage. And actually, for all our expectations, the two prefab rooms of Initial Access aren’t super-size big - tomb-cold and full of possibilities, yes, but not monumentally impressive in the manner of, say, A Foundation in Bristol. But this no-nonsense venue is what it is, where it is and that’s all part of the charm.. “I didn’t want to call it the ‘Frank Cohen Collection’”, says Cohen. “It just would have been a bit naff on the front of a warehouse.”

With the latest exhibition one is less transported out of Industrial Britain to the Indian subcontinent as made aware of the shifting politics of perception between here and there. An air of dissent pervades but, given the vast cultural distance between the UK and India, it’s all too easy to simplify its origins. Cohen comes bowling up to our group with the gracious intention of letting us know he’s caught up with some interviews in the other room. “Trouble is, these journos, they just don’t understand… they’ve got their deadlines,” he quips with the likely presumption that we’re museum as opposed to press folk. And I think he’s probably right, on a wider level, for few of us “journos” are equipped with the kind of life experiences that would enable true comprehension of the very different positions from which this work was made and collected. Still, we come holding the variant hands we have, ready and willing to engage and hoover up sarnies.

Jitish Kallat, Hypotenuse, 2006
Photo credit: Peter Mallet
Copyright: Jitish Kallat, 2009
Courtesy: The Frank Cohen Collection

Jitish Kallat’s black lead sculpture at the door (‘Hypotenuse’, 2006) is perfectly placed. Two bare-chested boys (one, with anvil-style houses for feet, holding the other – a tot brandishing a toy plane – in his arms) stare just past you upon entry to the space as if you are not quite the symbol of Western hope they were expecting. Not surprisingly, given the artist’s status in Mumbai and success on the international scene, Kallat is a dominant presence in this show. His famous bone car in the adjacent space (‘Collidonthus’, 2007) one in his series of skeletal sculptures that was recently shown at the Royal Academy’s GSK Contemporary (also curated by Thorp) appears more Pop-cheeky than eco-earnest. It’s yellowing structure is equally reminiscent of ‘Pimp my Ride’ and ‘Scooby-Doo’ as any natural history museum exhibit. Kallat makes a rather ludicrous dinosaur out of a major symbol of 20th century progress.

Subodh Gupta, Curry, 2004
Photo credit: Peter Mallet
Copyright: Subodh Gupta, 2009
Courtesy: The Frank Cohen Collection

The most internationally recognised member of the group is Subodh Gupta- one of his large, domestic installations is currently refracting light as part of Nicholas Bourriaud’s Tate Triennial exhibition. I find that the examples of his work here offer more interesting propositions. Familiar objects (such as hotel kitchen utensils and a wooden door placed in front of a golden shadow ‘other’) have been scaled up or appropriated in ways in ways that subtly agitate our understanding of representation: as a sociological territory and an art historical category. The restrained scale of ‘Curry’ (2004) with its inferences to Western stereotyping of Indian culture and the desirability of shiny stuff, describes the everyday/monumental shift in ways its more imposing mushroom-cloud sibling (‘Line of Control’, 2008) in the Tate’s Duveen Galleries fails to do.

Thukral and Tagra, Phantom @XI B-II, 2007
Copyright: Thukral and Tagra, 2008
Courtesy: The Frank Cohen Collection

Emerging figures Thukral and Tagra’s appropriation of particular graphic and painterly styles can appear a little too much like Web-world wallpaper to be taken seriously as critique. Their clever re-packaging of the worlds of paint and products becomes more interesting the further it moves from both: ‘Homosapiens Brainstorm 2’ (2008), is a monochromatic Wingdings wonderland of pertinent cultural motifs that takes one from natural world beginnings to destructive human endings via British colonial-era portraits and ‘Where’s Waldo?’ The insectoid shift here between a wealth of local narratives and a bigger global picture is skin-crawlingly good.

T.V. Santhosh, Enemies’ Enemy II, 2008
Copyright: T.V. Santhosh, 2008
Courtesy: The Frank Cohen Collection

There’s a lot to like about Bangalore-based Murali Cheeroth’s paintings that describe the drive of Western-branded urbanity across the globe. Here, though, they appear a little awkward – as if unable to cope with the barefaced exposure induced by the hard lighting and spare surroundings. His clashing palette is at points truly sublime but the compositional segue between Richard Hamilton-style photo-realisation and abstract digital manipulation at points rub one against the other down rather predictable symbolic avenues. T.V. Santhosh’s diptych (‘Enemies’ Enemy II’, 2008), with its purposely incongruous movie title ring, is charged with a similar neon-lit tension. His soldiers appear solarised, but whether by media flashbulbs or the flash of an explosive, one cannot be sure.

Reena Saini Kallat, Penumbra Passage (Canine Cases), 2006
Copyright: the Artist, 2009
Courtesy: The Frank Cohen Collection

I never quite get over the approach to Reena Saini Kallat’s ‘Canine Cases’ (2006) to work out how I feel about what she makes – it’s truly unnerving. Two large, realist portraits of little girls’ heads appear hung on the back wall of the second space above museological display cases of bone-like artefacts. The presentation is a little derivative but her rather sinister twisting of cultural perception is not. In this sense they are perhaps the most successful works here. An anti-pigeon spike of a reminder that despite the increasingly shared intellectual territories between East and West, the breach between cultural zones is not a place within which presumptions should ever be allowed to settle.

Passage to India Part II will run at Initial Access until 1 August 2009.