It might sound far too obvious to some, that the title of Kaushik's show asks the viewers to look closely, bringing near your two eye lids to each other (when thinking of actually squeezing lime in your eyes), reducing the focal length, and moving closer to the intricacies of the work that have been presented at the Chatterjee and Lal gallery. At once, you will notice the compounded nature of things that were packaged for you as a black box. We never dared to open them up, the gadgets produced in the electrical age, just before or alongside the first age of modern technology, did we? The television box, the computer motherboards, the printers, scanners and all sorts of gadgets that mediated our lives into the virtual world of the digital. Kaushik turns this world inside out, making the gallery into a laboratory of sorts where he jumps two steps at once. The first as I mentioned before, of opening up the machines inviting us to observe closely their anatomy. The second is to reconfigure them into new relationships through an inflected human agency. Challenging the autonomous world of machines, the new arrangements are left naked for a brave investigation of parts and pieces that we would never otherwise fiddle with.
In peeling off their outer skins, the artist converts the interior landscape of the gallery into an orgy of sorts, where different machinic components hybridize in unexpected ways. At once echoing the technological version of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, the exhibition whispers loudly the subterranean construct of our recent domesticity. Further, by fusing them with phenomenal experiences together, the project talks of machines as human extensions, and our cyborg-esque lives. A certain grim critique emerges in the creation of several pieces. The objects from the first section bring together the delicate and the robust in strange ways, where each material of either category have taken the characteristics of the other in a compelling way. The pink plastic flower-like fan stands on three fragile spider-like wooden legs, while restrained in lateral motion through a metal axle. The dangling scaled plastic water tank on an intricately wire-mesh crafted vertical structure reminds of the complex housing forms that people have shaped themselves in certain parts of the city. The precarious nature of the entire installation exclaims the exigencies of living conditions in the city. In the same section, another installation reworks a machine to lift a small load, albeit so slowly that it can almost be missed. However, engaging patiently with the work will bring to you everyday scenes of watching the heavy materials slowly lifted by cranes that can be spotted on construction sites all across the city.
Such parallels may be obvious on two fronts - firstly, from my own architectural training and reading of these works, but more importantly, from Kaushik's close pedagogical engagement at the architecture school where he has been teaching visual studies for about more than twenty years. An "architectural" reading brings out questions of form, space and their experiential relationships with human beings that seem to be embedded in most of these works. These may be explored and understood at two evident levels - the objectual as well as the representational. Scaled models are the most used instruments in spatial and form-al studies in architectural studios. When viewed as heuristic architectural devices, Kaushik's machines bring up complex narratives of city life - the manner in which the city sustains and decays at the same time. On the other hand, the exhibition provokes us to think how living for thus long with and around machines have immuned us to their voices, effects and the imbibed corporeal transfigurations that were never a part of our bodies and everyday experiences. Open display of bundles of wires, the array of screens, the series of bulbs and such other fields of spare parts shall certainly bring us to reconsider the world of gadgets that surrounds us. Today, we perform with these machines without necessarily questioning them.
At regular intervals, the entire space begins to chatter and clang with sounds and lights, perplexing and exciting you to capture the many minute movements that occur across all machines that seem to be invisibly connected. The bulbed spraying fountain, the waterjet scanner, the rotating disc, the ringing telephone, the hammering axles, the glowing bulbs simultaneously come to life, creating an environment of chaos and stimulatory excess. It is here that Kaushik hints to the squeezing lime once again - to the tendency of resistance that may cause ourselves to shut off to such world of simulation. This exhibition may not point at, or even address ideas about aesthetic in the sphere of the visual. It is visibly chaotic, where no contraption shall offer you a pleasing background to take a picture. Each machine is seen in the backdrop of the other. It will not offer you easy answers. It begs yet again, to squeeze lime in your eye.
In peeling off their outer skins, the artist converts the interior landscape of the gallery into an orgy of sorts, where different machinic components hybridize in unexpected ways. At once echoing the technological version of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, the exhibition whispers loudly the subterranean construct of our recent domesticity. Further, by fusing them with phenomenal experiences together, the project talks of machines as human extensions, and our cyborg-esque lives. A certain grim critique emerges in the creation of several pieces. The objects from the first section bring together the delicate and the robust in strange ways, where each material of either category have taken the characteristics of the other in a compelling way. The pink plastic flower-like fan stands on three fragile spider-like wooden legs, while restrained in lateral motion through a metal axle. The dangling scaled plastic water tank on an intricately wire-mesh crafted vertical structure reminds of the complex housing forms that people have shaped themselves in certain parts of the city. The precarious nature of the entire installation exclaims the exigencies of living conditions in the city. In the same section, another installation reworks a machine to lift a small load, albeit so slowly that it can almost be missed. However, engaging patiently with the work will bring to you everyday scenes of watching the heavy materials slowly lifted by cranes that can be spotted on construction sites all across the city.
Such parallels may be obvious on two fronts - firstly, from my own architectural training and reading of these works, but more importantly, from Kaushik's close pedagogical engagement at the architecture school where he has been teaching visual studies for about more than twenty years. An "architectural" reading brings out questions of form, space and their experiential relationships with human beings that seem to be embedded in most of these works. These may be explored and understood at two evident levels - the objectual as well as the representational. Scaled models are the most used instruments in spatial and form-al studies in architectural studios. When viewed as heuristic architectural devices, Kaushik's machines bring up complex narratives of city life - the manner in which the city sustains and decays at the same time. On the other hand, the exhibition provokes us to think how living for thus long with and around machines have immuned us to their voices, effects and the imbibed corporeal transfigurations that were never a part of our bodies and everyday experiences. Open display of bundles of wires, the array of screens, the series of bulbs and such other fields of spare parts shall certainly bring us to reconsider the world of gadgets that surrounds us. Today, we perform with these machines without necessarily questioning them.
At regular intervals, the entire space begins to chatter and clang with sounds and lights, perplexing and exciting you to capture the many minute movements that occur across all machines that seem to be invisibly connected. The bulbed spraying fountain, the waterjet scanner, the rotating disc, the ringing telephone, the hammering axles, the glowing bulbs simultaneously come to life, creating an environment of chaos and stimulatory excess. It is here that Kaushik hints to the squeezing lime once again - to the tendency of resistance that may cause ourselves to shut off to such world of simulation. This exhibition may not point at, or even address ideas about aesthetic in the sphere of the visual. It is visibly chaotic, where no contraption shall offer you a pleasing background to take a picture. Each machine is seen in the backdrop of the other. It will not offer you easy answers. It begs yet again, to squeeze lime in your eye.
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