ART: Stories your’s and mine.

There were people from different walks of lives, even the almost stereotypical caricatures: flamboyant, drunk old men, proud, young and pretty muse apparitions, the calculative buyers, and the other worldly drifters. It was an evening for the celebration of art. It was as eventful as a social evening gets. When I left the premises I was reminded of a famous painter, Jatin Das’s words: “"Creativity is a transfer of energy".

I was left with a craving to script something after 48 hours of no sleep, truly energized by the exuberant creativity around me. But it also spawned the reflective questioning that ensued.

I was repeating to myself the usual artistic introspections and on the other hand I wondered about perceptions of art in a larger sense. I questioned: what it means to an artist, a artist, or me the artist: to exhibit. Art is personal; no artist would disagree. But all art seeks patronage and an audience. Exhibitionism somehow seemed antagonistic to the thesis of art being a personal tryst. One would agree that something heavy and wanting of expression within oneself drives the process of creation. Art sometimes is making sense, and hence sharing the knowledge produced becomes an exhibition. It is also a moment or pinnacle in occurrence which is not incidental but defining to the artist, exhibition then is a personal footnote on a dairy. I would go so far as saying that all art is crystallized, born in a moment of clarity or vision that makes it worth the effort of exhibiting.

There is a certain added dimension to what people have vaguely termed, ‘contemporary art’. Most contemporary art is a result of a lot of interrogation, internal, external and of regions between the two. Not to say that other traditional arts did not, contemporary art alone foregrounds this exploration. This form of art is meditation which does not culminate in the exhibition, but in fact carries forth the dialogic process that the artist begins for his own self. The artist’s personal dialog and the dialogue on the outside between the art and the viewer lend to multiplicities. To each it derives a satisfaction, maybe a personal catharsis too. Exhibiting then is an artist’s way of exposing a thought process, an experience that they find valuable, or a finding that is of occasion to them. I am speaking to you my thoughts like strokes on a painting seek to speak to you. Fortunately, words are malleable and so is art, to take on meanings and expressions that are diverse and at once fascinating.