Bharti Kher, Not yet titled (detail), 2010, Bindis on paper, Photo: John Jones Fine-Art Photography. |
Between Social Milieus, the Slightly Awkward and Strange in Daily Rituals |
Bharti Kher, from inevitable undeniable necessary, Photo: Mike Bruce.
Bharti Kher, from inevitable undeniable necessary, Photo: Mike Bruce.
Bharti Kher, Not yet titled, 2010, Bindis on paper, Photo: John Jones Fine-Art Photography. |
Hauser & Wirth London In her art, Kher gives form to the slightly strange and slightly awkward encounters with the daily rituals of life. Her vision makes the banal wondrous and the quotidian unusual, sometimes even disturbing. Her use of found objects, such as mirrors or furniture, is informed by her own position as an artist located between geographic and social milieus. Her way of working is exploratory: surveying, looking, collecting, and transforming. By bringing to attention the overlooked world with its everyday acts, such as applying the bindi in Indian culture, confessing as a ritual or looking at oneself in a mirror, and then re-assessing their meaning, Kher’s work repositions the viewer’s relationship with the object. An arcane symbol of fertility, the contemporary stick-on bindi is a popular cosmetic device available in different shapes and colours and is an integral part of Kher’s œuvre. Exploiting their cultural and aesthetic dualisms, Kher uses bindis as an epidermal filter to transform objects. As shimmering signs in the form of waves, constellations, and spirals, Kher’s bindis mediate between codes and symbols and the ritual marking of time. In the main gallery will be Confess, a room whose interior surfaces are animated by oculi-like feminine bindis, providing a boisterous, almost pagan, counterpoint to the hushed rituals of the confessional. The single light bulb hanging from the ceiling brings with it images of forced confessions in prison cells. The claustrophobia of the domestic realm, a persistent theme in Kher’s work, finds parallels in the staged decorum of the church with cupboards that whisper secrets that oscillate between truth and lies. In the same space, a motorised rocking horse is transformed into a unicorn, its horn marking the arc of time. In a series of medical charts veiled by a diaphanous skin of bindis, Kher plays with the paradoxical nature of the sperm-shaped bindi, at once masculine and feminine, mainstream and esoteric, enduring and ephemeral. Multitudes of these markers provide a psychic filter to the medical charts by drawing our attention to the often painful and unpredictable realities of birthing and the awkwardness of dealing with abnormality both psychologically and genetically. Kher’s fascination with the interiority of things, from the sanctuary of a private space to cross-sections of a birthing body, brings her unfolding process to the heavily contoured form of a mountain surgically split along a fault line revealing dark, smooth surfaces. Entitled •Moving Mountains•, the sculpture suggests the impermanence of seemingly immutable objects and the potential of interior rhizomatic space to challenge hierarchic thought. The artist’s metaphysical explorations are made palpable by Sing. A type of standing bell, the singing bowl is used to induce meditation and support chanting in Tantric Buddhism. Replacing the monk, a mechanical rod powered by a visible motor rubs the mallet around the rim of the bowl to produce a continuous ‘singing’ sound. By placing the bowl in the vault (the gallery is housed in a bank designed by the architect of New Delhi, Edwin Lutyens), Kher initiates a dialogue between metaphysical and material pursuits, absence and presence, while simultaneously marking a specific historical context.
Bharti Kher, from inevitable undeniable necessary, Photo: Mike Bruce.
Bharti Kher, from inevitable undeniable necessary, Photo: Mike Bruce. |
Bharti Kher, Not yet titled (detail), 2010, Bindis on paper, Photo: John Jones Fine-Art Photography. |
Bharti Kher, An Absence Of Assignable Cause (The Heart), 2007, Bindis on fiberglass, 152.4 x 457.2 x 182.9 cm. |
Bhart Kher's Viral Bindis, Marks of the Spiritual, Signs of the Mystical |
Bharti Kher: The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own, Photo: Bartholomew/Netphotograph.com Image courtesy of the Artist and Nature Morte, New Delhi, © Bharti Kher, 2006. |
Baltic Centre In her first UK solo show, the artist uses the symbol of a tree in her sculpture Solarum Series. The tree appears in the ancient mythologies of many cultures. Kher uses these references, including the mythical warnings of the speaking tree and combines them with contemporary references, such as the recent biological advances of cloning, and rejection personified in the fallen tree. Instead of leaves or fruit, the branches of Solarum Series bear the heads of hundreds of creatures. Alongside these mystical sculptures is Virus, a series of richly created panels covered with thousands of bindi. The bindi is a spiritual Hindu mark applied to the forehead to represent the third eye. The religious token becomes secular in the densely pattered artworks. Kher uses the symbol to highlight the ordering of human societies, patterns of migration and landscape and the passage of time. Raised in London, Bharti Kher studied Fine Art and Painting at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne. Now living and working in New Delhi, she has a growing international reputation for creating fantastical, surreal environments. |
Bharti Kher, Hungry Dogs Eat Dirty Pudding, 2004, Fiberglass and plastic, 203.2 x 76.2 x 101.6 cm. |
