Parul Gupta / Space; underscore

essay for Parul Gupta's works displayed at Studio reD, Prabhadevi.

Space; underscore

While Newton believed that smaller masses in space are fundamentally attracted into the gravitational “pull” of the heavier ones, Einstein suggests that objects essentially experience a spatial “push” that determines their movement and relative position concerning each other. Parul Gupta’s works are tensioned between the above “push” and “pull” of space, characterized in her experiments with the practice of drawing. In her sensitive perception that is intuitively moved by the silent suggestions of shifting lights, shadows, events and perspectives, Gupta essentially morphs space into a dynamic entity. Through her works, one can consider several scientific as well as perceptual registers of space- time at once, that get translated into drawings, sculptures and site-specific interventions. In doing so, Gupta underscores her works not simply as an aesthetic preoccupation, instead as a fertile field of knowledge.

 

A series of squares set within meticulous grids destabilize our modes of perception. Stable tilts, deviating parallels, unidentical equals and accurate unfits characterize these works. On a deeper gaze, seemingly stable Cartesian space begins to appear warped. Is one cheated into a perceptual labyrinth or has one entered a space of distortion? Gently diverging lines of the substratum and the surface leave one thinking about their interspatial relationships. The solid squares leap out of the paper, the drawings take one deeper into the infinitum of the grid. In this tension, the viewer is challenged on his/her grounds of rationality. 

Gupta’s works index and overlap several spatio-temporal graphs that invite closer investigation. Densities of space created in folding, releasing, splitting, dissecting, fading or strengthening lines within an imagined continuum narrates numerous stories. Are these scores waiting to be sounded into music, or are these barcodes of a number yet to be counted? Are these the unfolded scales of early observatories that were built to map the cartography of the skies; or are these seismographic charts that mark the tectonic shifts to which our everyday gets attuned on ground? Are they streams of microwaves within which we are inevitably swimming or the rhythms of a pulsating organ emanating from within the body? As we consider these questions within the artist’s finely drafted lines, encompassing poetry of mathematics begins to emerge. 

What does a line want to be? Perhaps in Gupta’s practice, this question is inexhaustive. The lines take multifarious forms creating degrees of opacity and translucency, rigidity and movement. Gupta demonstrates that her lines are continually breathing and have an agency of their own. They fold the viewers within forces of space to guide them into gentle action. Her works are orchestrations of line assemblies that do not limit themselves within the bounds of the frame. Instead, they speak to its edges and even bargain to enter from outside or escape from within them. It is here that her serious constructions assume an emancipatory quality of play and find their planes of engagement with the observer.

All images: Parul Gupta.