Gagan Singh’s humour and observations grace our screens through Chatterjee and Lal’s virtual show ‘Drawings made during lockdown 2020’
Battling our inner demons and other distractions seem to be at the forefront of our attentions, while our minds rage between moods. The power of ready observation and a lack of schedule seems to teeter over that fine balance between sanity and insanity. The easiest way, perhaps, to describe our inner turmoil is through the opposite of all that we consider chaos – nature and beauty. We could go even a step further, by writing or drawing in our present aggregations in a diary of sorts, which is in effect, how artist Gagan Singh finds his visual voice.
The expression of ennui and pensiveness through immediate wit is the best way to put Gagan Singh’s works. He expresses his present moment and observations with a quick sketch, and without barring his emotive gestures. The space to think is minimal and yet one can observe that the release of thought through drawing is articulated well. “The drawings are based on my mental sufferings of being trapped at home during the Covid 19 period. To remain mentally balanced, I took out my sufferings in the form of humour with death lurking over my forehead at all times. A strange phenomena to feel good, enjoy the silence, the fresh air knowing this is a death trap” he commented.
Easily translating the phenomenon of the everyday into mini diary entries, the fervent stream of thought in the work is provoking. We are easily drawn in, amused and perplexed at the tenacity and depth of a singular work. It only occurs later, that we were looking at a work of art and that it did affect us in some way, and that we are still reflecting on the temporariness of gesture and the permanence of ingenuity.
