Mumbai snapshots, Gandhi, Picasso - all on Dodiya\’s shutters

NEW DELHI - Leading contemporary artist Atul Dodiya uses the shutters of shops in Mumbai as the backdrop of his art works that combine snapshots of the city\’s changing urban landscape, references to history of classical painting, icons like Mahatma Gandhi, Hindu gods and even filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak to create complex surreal compositions.

According to him, downed shutters became symbolic of the city he calls home whenever Mumbai was under siege like during riots or curfew, specially in the last decade.

Twelve of his large-format oil paintings on canvas - a new collection of calibrated shutters - are on display at the Vadehra Art Gallery in an exhibition \”Malevich Matters and Other Shutters\”, which opened in the capital Friday.

\”The shutters are symbolic of all that are on the ground. My earlier shutters, the ones which I experimented with in 1999-2000 were operational shutters - a kind of conceptual solid art - that could move up and down and had a definite feel. I used enamel paint on metal roller coasters,\” Dodiya told IANS here.

Operating in a conceptual space between painting, sculpture and theatre, Dodiya\’s first generation shutters were real metal roller doors that sometimes moved up to reveal acrylic interiors painted in varnish and gold powder or rolled down to form hard metal surfaces for hand-painted images.

But the new shutters have broken away.

\”I have used oil for my new shutters which are painted on canvas. The life-like corrugated metallic surface of shutters - which make up the backdrop - have images of Picasso, Bhupen Kakkar, Tyeb Mehta, Mahatma and all those people I admire. They appear on the surface like applique work. And I allow this hybrid imagery to happen so that it engages the viewer and raises questions,\” Dodiya said.

A 102\” X 66\” canvas, \”J, Beuys & Sons\”, stands out for its use of multiple mediums like graffiti captions, a small inset drawing of Mahatma Gandhi digging a hole, doodling and juxtaposition of opposing images.

Named after German performance artist Joseph Beuys, the shutter is the facade of a shop that rents out funeral services in Mumbai.

\”Mahatma Gandhi always reminds me of the artist Joseph Beuys,\” Dodiya said.

The artist, a native of Gujarat, has also painted a series on Mahatma Gandhi.

Dodiya said he \”began painting shutters when the Tate Modern museum in London commissioned him to create urban landscapes of Mumbai for its \’Century City\’ show in 2000\”.

\”Mumbai was selected as one of the cities. The theme was the last decade. The last decade in Mumbai was marked by conflicts, riots, curfew and the rise of the underworld. Whenever the city was under siege it downed its shutters and streets emptied out. The shutters became a symbol of the streets of Mumbai where I grew up,\” he