Location: Booth 36, Art Mumbai
Graffiti - mid 19th century: from Italian (plural), from graffio ‘a scratch’
Urban - early 17th century: from Latin urbanus, from urbs, urb- ‘city’
Scratches on City Maps uncovers the explorations envisaged by select artists to embrace liberation within the expanse of public spaces, extending it further in enclosed setups such as studios, galleries and fairs to break open, negotiate and even puncture norms that entail the institution of art.
From visualization of language and calligraffiti to the image of a small furry mammal carrying a spray can with a heart; from abstract forms in reflective mediums to canvases that present skylines interrupted by pillars and columns that are fragmenting, disintegrating, often turning into ephemeral structures as well as sculptures that reimagine the personal yearning for a desired home – the curation at Booth 36 by Gallery XXL attempts to invoke reflections on imprinted patterns and stories that are not oppressed by gravity.
As works presented by artists based in Paris, New York City, Berlin, Mumbai, New Delhi and Baroda invoke the viewers to walk with artists, who over here are flaneurs across borders with practices spanning over 10 years, the display open portals to and through the streets in order to look deeper into the exercise of mark making – critically reinvented by using urban art techniques. Acute observers of streets and cities, these marks left behind by the artists pave the way for futures that account for diverse intersectional narratives and represent the desire to reimagine the city’s landscape with gestures of intrepid expressions that are at times spontaneous, at other times calculated, guerilla in their fervor and act, and in that radical.
PLATFORM 36
Terminal Underground: to the streets
Underneath this booth is a a level that holds the following dwelling:
Mental prototypes that are defined by language is a necessary tool in this level for it enables the communication and cultural emanation of any institution. Codified Words and letters become manifestations of language here and are usually employed to convey highly determinate meanings. However, most of the active words here are leftovers for those who are not underground. Thrown on street posters, staircases, and textiles, they start existing in a gestural form, where the body comes to the surface in quest of freedom from expression, meaning and representation. As an intimate relationship is soiled in some personal letters, and scripts which hide and reveal bodies in momentum, bodies in silence, brim to the surface – the underground expands into a wonderland, and invites you to follow the bunny who now yearns to hijack the in-betweens of bodies, cities, institutions.
PLATFORM 36
Terminal Foreground: through the streets
In front of this booth are portals that open through the streets.
There are visuals in the foreground (from fore, "before,” and ground, "foundation) here that emerge through the streets. Visuals that reflect, deduct, construct, deconstruct any form into a deep abyss for meanings, different forms of meaninglessness – evoking memories and functionalities as well as pressed architectures, which when woven, eagerly anticipate an action. The action where recurring images of architecture that include interiors of pools and doors with absent bodies (their intimate presence often felt as : a small CCTV camera faces a hollow frame, a passport swings open curved lines and globes, and a mistake that tears apart every skyline turns into a boat) sew dents on every skyline.
By the time the advancements of the city above traveled to the village, the village had already traveled to the city. As a new journey towards belongings in the foreground now begins – in concrete and metal, ceramic tiles and black glass – staircases descend into elevated structures without anybody. Patterns intermingle as they get abstracted and then emerges an urban dream – wherein home is no longer composed of a bedroom, a dining room, a toilet and a kitchen. Instead something else. What would entail the new composition of belongings that emerge through the streets?
