It is time again, to walk through atmospheric warehouses and found spaces that Fort Kochi throws open to artists and audiences during the Kochi Muziris Biennale. Here are eight of the many exhibits at Whorled Explorations, curated by Jitish Kallat.
NS Harsha
Harsha’s Punarapi Jananam Punarapi Maranam (Again Birth, Again Death) (2013) is an asymmetrical looped drawing on one entire wall of a warehouse in Aspinwall. It is replete with stars and planets. As you walk its length, you travel vast distances in its dark luminosity. It is a sweeping gesture. It is thrilling to see this 79-feet painting, the confidence of the artist in being “old school” – expansive and delicate simultaneously, it is infinitely satisfying.
Anish Kapoor
One would have expected something that filled a vast interior, like his Tate Modern Marsyas that consumed the Turbine hall, or shaped spice contours. Instead, the artist chose the room that opens out onto the pier (where Sheela Gowda’s grinding stones spilled out in the last biennale). In Descension (2014), dark water rotates in a shallow circular well roughly 10 foot in diameter. Continuously surging, splashing, frothing, the perpetual motion of the seas echoed, the sound of the hidden motor, a roar – it brought in the ocean, and all that came over the years to this shore. Scaled to the opening to the pier, an oceanic and galactic swirl mesmerised.
Marie Velardi
Swiss artist Marie Velardi’s Future Perfect, 21st Century (2006/2014) is a cleverly conceived timeline of the 21st century using text and excerpts from screenplays from science fiction books and films of the 20th century. She charts end of the world scenarios and space travel like a modern mapmaker – even a world where everyone speaks Portuguese. Arthur C Clark and District 9, Aldous Huxley and Bong Joon Ho, James Cameron and Wong Kar-wai came together in eclectic imagination. In another vast square room, painted blue with Pacific Ocean emblazoned, a different map unfolds – those of lost islands due to climate change. Barely there watercolours of the islands that will disappear line the walls and constitute the Atlas des Iles Perdues 2107 (2007).
Sahej Rahal
One of the younger artists in this biennale, Rahal’s energy seemed to bring his sculpted forms alive. Working for months in the space that functioned as a former lab, his Harbinger (2014), mythic sci-fi creatures were sculpted as if they were about to burst through the walls like in a Steven Spielberg sci-fi disaster film. As one walked through the passages, they perched on low walls, stretched from floor to ceiling. With an organic surface skin, the projected video of a ‘breathing’ form made these potent and ominous.
Bharti Kher
At Pepper House, in two rooms with sloping Mangalore tiled roofs and windows that open out to Kochi’s busy waterfront, glimpses of all kinds of boat go by. To be among Bharti Kher’s Three Decimal Points/Of a minute/Of a second/Of a degree (2014) – precisely produced wood suspended triangles with angular pendulums – is to walk through scale, through a still wind, through soundless chimes, through to the sea outside.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Pan-Anthem (2014) at David Hall is a wonderfully worked interactive sound piece based on the military spending of the nations of the world. There are the expected big spenders – USA, Israel – then the discovery that Costa Rica, Iceland and Andorra have no spending on arms at all. Arranged as an increase in spending graph from left to right, the speakers are activated by motion sensors that detect the presence of viewers in front of them that light up revealing the name of the country as the national anthem is played, a cacophony of patriotism linked to violence.
Cosmology to Cartography
Curators Vivek Nanda and Alex Johnson have hung this exhibition in a warehouse, ‘Heritage’, an Aladdin’s cave of pillars and massive artefacts, from Christian art to traditional furniture. To discover this stunning collection of Jain and Hindu cosmological charts and hangings and a series of magical painted and printed maps from the 15th-19th century is an unexpected treat. This juxtaposition of the maps and the treasures that brought the colonisers is a contextual break from the contemporary art on view at the biennale.
Xu Bing
Using light and shadow, Chinese artist Xu Bing fashions a gigantic landscape resembling a classical Chinese painting from the Ming dynasty period – a period that saw Chinese expeditions to India’s west coast. In Background Story: Endless Xishan Mountain Scenery (2014) he throws shadows using leaves, fibres and other discarded materials on to a screen, to bring alive a landscape painting by Ming dynasty artist Xu Ben. Viewed from the front, this shadow painting copies an old master ingeniously, its cinematic quality examines contemporary art making and viewing.
The Kochi Muziris Biennale run until March 29.
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NS Harsha
Harsha’s Punarapi Jananam Punarapi Maranam (Again Birth, Again Death) (2013) is an asymmetrical looped drawing on one entire wall of a warehouse in Aspinwall. It is replete with stars and planets. As you walk its length, you travel vast distances in its dark luminosity. It is a sweeping gesture. It is thrilling to see this 79-feet painting, the confidence of the artist in being “old school” – expansive and delicate simultaneously, it is infinitely satisfying.
Anish Kapoor
One would have expected something that filled a vast interior, like his Tate Modern Marsyas that consumed the Turbine hall, or shaped spice contours. Instead, the artist chose the room that opens out onto the pier (where Sheela Gowda’s grinding stones spilled out in the last biennale). In Descension (2014), dark water rotates in a shallow circular well roughly 10 foot in diameter. Continuously surging, splashing, frothing, the perpetual motion of the seas echoed, the sound of the hidden motor, a roar – it brought in the ocean, and all that came over the years to this shore. Scaled to the opening to the pier, an oceanic and galactic swirl mesmerised.
Marie Velardi
Swiss artist Marie Velardi’s Future Perfect, 21st Century (2006/2014) is a cleverly conceived timeline of the 21st century using text and excerpts from screenplays from science fiction books and films of the 20th century. She charts end of the world scenarios and space travel like a modern mapmaker – even a world where everyone speaks Portuguese. Arthur C Clark and District 9, Aldous Huxley and Bong Joon Ho, James Cameron and Wong Kar-wai came together in eclectic imagination. In another vast square room, painted blue with Pacific Ocean emblazoned, a different map unfolds – those of lost islands due to climate change. Barely there watercolours of the islands that will disappear line the walls and constitute the Atlas des Iles Perdues 2107 (2007).
Sahej Rahal
One of the younger artists in this biennale, Rahal’s energy seemed to bring his sculpted forms alive. Working for months in the space that functioned as a former lab, his Harbinger (2014), mythic sci-fi creatures were sculpted as if they were about to burst through the walls like in a Steven Spielberg sci-fi disaster film. As one walked through the passages, they perched on low walls, stretched from floor to ceiling. With an organic surface skin, the projected video of a ‘breathing’ form made these potent and ominous.
Bharti Kher
At Pepper House, in two rooms with sloping Mangalore tiled roofs and windows that open out to Kochi’s busy waterfront, glimpses of all kinds of boat go by. To be among Bharti Kher’s Three Decimal Points/Of a minute/Of a second/Of a degree (2014) – precisely produced wood suspended triangles with angular pendulums – is to walk through scale, through a still wind, through soundless chimes, through to the sea outside.
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Pan-Anthem (2014) at David Hall is a wonderfully worked interactive sound piece based on the military spending of the nations of the world. There are the expected big spenders – USA, Israel – then the discovery that Costa Rica, Iceland and Andorra have no spending on arms at all. Arranged as an increase in spending graph from left to right, the speakers are activated by motion sensors that detect the presence of viewers in front of them that light up revealing the name of the country as the national anthem is played, a cacophony of patriotism linked to violence.
Cosmology to Cartography
Curators Vivek Nanda and Alex Johnson have hung this exhibition in a warehouse, ‘Heritage’, an Aladdin’s cave of pillars and massive artefacts, from Christian art to traditional furniture. To discover this stunning collection of Jain and Hindu cosmological charts and hangings and a series of magical painted and printed maps from the 15th-19th century is an unexpected treat. This juxtaposition of the maps and the treasures that brought the colonisers is a contextual break from the contemporary art on view at the biennale.
Xu Bing
Using light and shadow, Chinese artist Xu Bing fashions a gigantic landscape resembling a classical Chinese painting from the Ming dynasty period – a period that saw Chinese expeditions to India’s west coast. In Background Story: Endless Xishan Mountain Scenery (2014) he throws shadows using leaves, fibres and other discarded materials on to a screen, to bring alive a landscape painting by Ming dynasty artist Xu Ben. Viewed from the front, this shadow painting copies an old master ingeniously, its cinematic quality examines contemporary art making and viewing.
The Kochi Muziris Biennale run until March 29.