The New York based gallery, Thomas Erben, presents ‘Arrested Views’ by Sheela Gowda and Yamini Nayar (April– May, 2009).

The joint show by these two talented Indian artists includes an interesting artistic project. Both artists do extensive research in their art process, with Sheela Gowda opting to condense content through the formal outcome, whereas Yamini Nayar choosing to articulate a territorialized space, wherein fragments recombine, thus engendering multiple, parallel readings.

Sheela Gowda’s ‘Private Gallery’ presents viewers with a large, rectangular structure of 2 Formica ‘faux marble’ sheets that are set into a corner, allowing a narrow passage on each side. The viewer is confronted in the interior with painted references to canonized genres - vistas viewed from the artist’s car; a still life; portraits of domestic workers - migrants from India’s different regions of India to the city and some who are part of the artist’s household.

The conscious positioning that of the artist within her work’s articulation is echoed the way in which she chooses to construct the viewing situation to engage the visitor physically. She evokes conflicting reactions with a similar aim through the proximity of thumb-sized pads made of cow dung wallpapered on the inside of the structure. For the artist, the nod to minimalism and her conceptual usage of materials are keys in this work and of her art practice.

Yamini Nayar, on the other hand, wryly builds curious transitional objects as well as architectural spaces made out of found and raw materials for her photo works. Through process and image fragments, the artist combines references from early till mid 20th century historical sources to explore themes of cultural ambiguity. The exhibited photos articulate a formal language deftly within states of flux. They are structured carefully, yet are open ended, thus engaging levels of recognition as a subtle device to hold the image.

Truth and meaning are historically linked to both the history of photography and vision itself. We’ve learned that ‘truth’ in photography is malleable; however, can we really suppress assigning meaning? Without the need to arrest it, Yamini Nayar works within exactly this very dichotomy.