"Celebrating Faces"
showing recent Paintings
by
Deepak Khandelwal
at Amber Palace , Jaipur ( 5th- 11th Jan,2013)
Show Continues
at Juneja Art Gallery from 11th to 16th Feb. 2013
Art Corridor at Le Meridien Jaipur from 4th to
9th March. 2013
Celebrating Faces
Face is an identity embodied.
Face is the window of
one’s soul.
If face is the
real mirror of his heart, there could be no doubt that anyone could make out
what is going on in his mind, say the poets. There are people who hide their
emotions, thought process and intensely felt feelings. They could be
strategists, diplomats or at their worst hypocrites. But faces often don’t
cheat. Philosophically and theoretically speaking, face is the border line
between the public and the private. A person becomes an individual with a
distinct identity only when he/she is named and tamed. A nameless person is a
wild person. Faces, therefore anticipate a name, a story and a tangible
individual.
How do we understand
and locate the identities of the urban people who often aspire to look like the
successful models in their lives? What happens when a city is filled with
people who have similar looking faces? What happens when an urban space is
infested with people who think that their distinction is their identity while
in fact they do not have any to make a claim on? These are the questions that
Deepak Khandelwal raises in his beautiful, eye-catching, pleasing and
decorative works. These qualifications that I give to Deepak’s works are not to
condescend but to ululate the covert artistic strategy that he has taken to
ideate and debate a vital issue that we confront in our contemporary times; a
crisis in identity. Charlie Chaplin, while debating the industrial modernism
through his celluloid interpretation of the same in ‘Modern Times’ depicts one
of the greatest montages in the history of films. At the opening shot of the
movie, a herd of sheep moves thickly within a space, which slowly transforms
into a set of bowler hats that people wear to work in factories and the scene
is further juxtaposed with that of a huge clock that shows the
factory time.
We have crossed and
reaped the benefits of industrial modernism. So have we got the side and ill
effects of the same? Today we experience a different modernism; the information
technology modernism. Our work spaces have become highly sophisticated and the
internet space offers stardom to each and every person who uses it. In that
sense, we have all the reasons to believe that we have gained independence as
individuals and we have got our distinct identities. However, in reality, the
urban spaces are the places where one tend to lose the identity and become one
amongst the herd or the famous montage scene of bowler hats. We become another
person in the city who listens to the FM channels via headphones, or any person
who looks like a silhouette in the larger canvas of the city. Interestingly,
the urban spaces are where distinction of identity is played up through
advertisements and shop windows; these are the places where they assure
distinct identity and individuality.
However, identity is
in crisis. It is not about the identity crisis that the human beings used to
feel during the industrial modernism. He was more pre-occupied with the
alienating effects of the products that they used to produce and consume.
Today, the human being is more acclimatized within the general firmament of
mass production and things of its ilk. He has overcome the identity crisis. Still the identity is in
crisis. If the question of self definition and demarcation of social role and
position causes identity crisis, identity in crisis is caused by the collapse
of all systems that support the proliferation and prolongation of identity as a
sustainable resource for self growth and maintenance of self esteem. Each
moment, a human being in an urban space is asked to change according to the new
environment of desire. With a strong identity in place, as affirmed by the
social networking sites etc, the individual feels oppressed as he is caught in
a ceaseless whirlwind of demands and desires. This causes an imaginary collapse
of the systems of belief around. He/she is forced to change the faces as per
the demands of the society. He understands the crisis that happens to the very
notion of identity.
Deepak Khandelwal
while painting the faces brings this vital issue into focus. He posits a person
within the identity discourse as a face, which is discernable from a distance
but turns into abstract forms from proximity. This is exactly what happens in
the urban locations and situations. A person looks desirable and complete with
a distinct identity from a distance may look absolutely stereotypical and
confused when seen from close quarters. It is not just about a feeling of
physical approximation of the possible disillusionment caused by familiarity
but it is a philosophical state of people who are seen effective and authentic
from a distance transforms when confronted closely. The new realities
experienced within the social networking sites affirm this observation. The
abstraction that Deepak deliberately attributes to his images and figures is
triggered by the ideological stance that the artist takes when he negotiates
the very idea of identity in crisis or identity as a crisis.
Interestingly, the
people that we see in Deepak’s works are depersonalized presences of alluring
faces. One looks for familiarity while experiencing a sort of generic nature in
all of them. They are like glass facades of the high rise buildings and
corporate offices and shopping malls. They impart a sort of transparency and
transfuse a kind of intimacy with the people who are outside these
establishments. The idea of familiarity, invitation and transparency are highly
mutated by the reflections of the onlookers on the glass facades. Here juxtaposition
of two faces happens simultaneously. On the one hand, the face of the
establishment embodied in the glass facade engulfs the face of the individual
who stands outside and merges it with the products or people who are inside it,
causing the confusion of a narcissistic self and the objects of
contemplation/desire.
This confusion, in
fact generated by the mutual transference of faces in the hope of finding the
truth inside, is what goads Deepak to make the faces in his paintings beautiful
and mysteriously layered at the same time. Corporate economic establishments
give out the feeling that they are open to the public in a democratic way. But
the truth is that they give only the illusion of transparency. Slowly the
people who work in the urban situations and move around in the urban locations
become victims of this transparency, almost losing their identity and faces in
the forced juxtapositions with the products that encapsulate the economic as
well as politico-cultural agenda of the very same establishments. This is the
cause of crisis in identity. Once caught in this maze of self deception than
self reflection, people become transparent faces. And that is what exactly
happening in the works of Deepak.
The faces in Deepak’s
paintings become glass facades causing a forced metamorphosis of the people
into establishments that depersonalize everything through the illusion of
proximity and familiarity. People in the urban spaces look familiar but similar
in the way the economic establishments are in the same locations. They reflect
others on their faces. The same depersonalization of the selves happens in the
corridors of urban malls is replicated in the faces painted by Deepak in his
new series of paintings. Instead of reflecting the faces of other people,
Deepak cleverly juxtaposes these faces with various stereotypical samples
culled out from the urban high life. For example an onlooker could see dancing
couples in dapper suites, swimmers and bathers at pool side, loving couple
moving around, fashionable girls on runways, jaywalking people in the streets
and so on. What happens here is the human being on whose face these images are
painted on becomes a hoarding all by him/herself. He becomes a billboard where
other desirable models of urban life are depicted in their most alluring forms.
The faces, instead of becoming the heralding zones of identity turn themselves
into crisis zones where identity is changed at each passing moment as if they
were on a digital hoarding in the Times Square or Piccadilly.
However, one cannot
forget the fact that Deepak is a great face reader; rather a reader of faces in
his own fashion. He likes people and likes watching people and the innumerable
expressions that come to their faces in various social, familial and intimate
occasions.
These emotions are
translated and celebrated in his paintings. The love for face is not just
limited to his love for ‘beauty’.
As he believes in the
dictum that the beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, he likes to see
various faces with various hagiographic qualities. They need not necessarily be
the ideal beauties. According to the artist he is a ‘lover’ of faces that
reflect the beauty of mind. Even in the people he comes across in his walks in
the city streets and the village alleys, provide him with subjects as they are
most of unguarded while wandering in the streets. They express their own selves
through a sort of abandonment. And Deepak does not want to keep his elation
under check when he really feels happy about the people whose
faces show a variety of worlds contained in the ‘limited’
physiognomic details. While he is aware of the crisis of identity, he does not
forget to celebrate the identities evolved, whether they are natural or affected,
and expressed through the faces of the people.
 |
| Sangeeta Juneja, Gallery Artchill |
The highly ornamented,
decorated and sophisticated backgrounds that Deepak creates as the backdrop for
these faces are very important in the discussion of his works. The winding
arabesque patterns in a way reflect the autobiographical connection of the
artist with his historical city, Jaipur. Once the autobiographical reference is
transcended, we could see that these patterns and embellishments in fact
resonate with the urban tapestry of life, where everything is seen in order
even within the overwhelming chaos. Deepak removes the chaos of urban spaces
and isolates the faces as if they were icons of our times. The cross reference
is interesting as the artist himself wants to forward a critique on the conversion
of faces into digital hoardings where advertisements are flashed, inadvertently
resorts to the same strategy to embellish his paintings. Deepak's works
represent a time, and a time where identity is gained, lost and researched as
everyone knows that it is not the identity crisis rules the minds of the people
today but the crisis in the very formation of a singular/unique identity.
Johny ML
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