When art is built on architecture

CHENNAI: It is easier to be an artist here in India — there is so much material to work with, admits Gautam Bhatia, artist and architect. Gautam, who says he likes to ‘disturb people through his art’, adds, “The one thing which is natural in India is that there are disturbances in one’s life all the time — something on the street that upsets you, something on the news that’s so outrageous. So, to make art based on reality is very easy in India.” He almost sheepishly points out, “It must be much harder to be an artist in the US or Europe. Disturbances are things that one will need to cull and absorb from different sources.” Gautam, who is in the city to present his latest exhibition of paintings and sculptures ‘Earth Shadows’, says whatever he draws or sculpts bears semblance to architecture. This not only explains why most of his paintings have some sort of an architectural element, be it a building or a window, but it also tells us that he is not only an experienced architect, but a passionate one at that. “I spend 80 per cent of my time making buildings, so the architecture element always comes through,” he says. “Art is extension of being an architect.” The emphasis he lays on space and light in his drawings is quite obvious, even to an untrained art eye. “Space is only important to me because I’ve always been a practising architect. I always work around buildings and some space inside the building or outside. It is the only way in which I can work,” explains Gautam, “Isolation of space is something I just find impossible.” And as an explanation to  the role played by light in his work, he provides, “Light is used in order to define space – using it in a way to see that the sun is casting a shadow.” He breaks it down, “Awareness of light is there because of the rendering of shadow.” Gautam has used watercolours to portray some of his pet subjects, but black ink seems to be his favourite. “What you can show in these monochromatic drawings is hard to show in watercolours. The drawings have a stark, almost graphic quality – there is only a single wave of strokes which define everything, whether it is a place, a shadow or floorboards,” Gautam explains. And for more evidence that his art is heavily architecture-inspired, he says that his sculptures are related to seeing how they could be integrated with architecture. He points at a sculpture of a woman jumping from a height and reveals, “This was actually planned for the hotel in which there are 14 floors and she (the woman) kept coming further and further, to the swimming pool of the building, to stop just short of hitting the water.” His sculptures are an exploration of people in space, they are a record of movements, he adds. Gautam’s collection will be on display at Apparao Galleries, 7, Wallace Gardens, Chennai, till April 7.