Obsessions can kill you, feels Bose Krishnamachari. His latest exhibition, The Mirror Sees Best in the Dark, is themed on that premise. We look in a mirror to see our reflection and, what we see, we assume to be the truth. But this might not be so. What we see, instead, is what we perceive to be the truth. And our perceptions are always distorted by our obsessions, whether they be religion, nationalism, narcissism or technology. Obsessions ruin our objectivity. In his trademark style, Krishnamachari superimposes extremities in his artworks—like the excessive maximalism of ornamented Aranmula mirrors in a darkly-lit space juxtaposed with minimalistic Braille works in the roomy, well-lit part of the gallery. Sometimes, says Krishnamachari, the blind see the best. Truth shines brightest in the dark.
Like in his previous exhibitions, one can make out many of his classic elements in the current one as well. For example, his leaning towards the absurd. There is a subtle strain of mockery in the works. The artist becomes the spectator taking in our meaningless—almost comical—pursuit of our obsessions. Krishnamachari traces this to the time he worked in theatre at the age of 17 or so, and was influenced by the absurd theatre of stalwarts like G. Sankara Pillai and Samuel Beckett. There is also the minute attention to detail that the artist is known for. Everything is deliberate—from the uneven symmetry of the mirrors to the false wall created to the colour of the wallpaper to the materiality of the artworks. The diverse materials used—from graphite and copper to steel and metal—give the exhibits a layered and tactile feel.
In many ways, it is difficult to peg down Krishnamachari as an artist. There are so many contradictory things about him. On the one hand, he is a meticulous editor of his own works. Which is why the gallery almost has a sparse feel to it, a starkness that spotlights each easy-to-miss detail, like the saw placed beneath a series of decorated panels. The lethality of our obsessions is easily camouflaged by their misleading attractiveness, he seems to be saying. “I learnt all about the design aspect and about editing my own projects during my days of helping artists like Akbar Padamsee and Vivan Sundaram set up their exhibitions at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai,” he says.
On the other hand, he is a big risk-taker. Nothing has held him back from experimenting, least of all money. “I’m not a practical man in that sense,” he says. Once, he lost 20 kilograms worth of photographs when he did not have the funds to bring them back from London after his studies. Another time, he bought two trucks to take his travelling exhibition, LaVa, to the villages of India. But he had to sell them to finance the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Interestingly, he says the biggest risk in his life has been his family life. “I don’t know how far I have succeeded in that,” he says. “I feel I haven’t given my best to my wife and children. That is actually a risk. But it is a beautiful [risk].”
What is interesting about Krishnamachari is how he keeps re-inventing himself. “If you can create a sense of unpredictability about yourself, you are a great artist,” he says. Like his Stretched Bodies series of 2010, he is constantly stretching his own possibilities. Everything is fluid, from his philosophy to his art-making technique. Nothing is sacrosanct for the artist. One might say he is obsessed about not being obsessed. Art, he says, liberates. It gives the necessary distance from what could potentially entice and entrap you, like a mirror. But art, too, is not an obsession. “It is [only] a passion,” he says. “I have seen the ruin of so many artist friends because of their own ego.”
Krishnamachari says that what makes him a good artist is that he is a keen observer. “I have learnt so much from the artists, musicians, writers and others I hang out with,” he says. He describes it not so much learning as “imbibing”. Much like a mirror, he is constantly absorbing new inputs and reflecting them in his works, perhaps to a more obsessive degree than he realises. As he himself says, the difference between a mad man and a creative person is that the creative person knows how to channelise his schizophrenia.
(The Mirror Sees Best in the Dark will be on at Emami Art in Kolkata till March 10.)