Locus of Being – Solo

Gallery SKE, Bengaluru, India

14th January to 25th February – 2017

“The main focus of this show is to locate within yourself that point which makes you get into action or inaction, to reveal your own knot of action.” Astha Butail

A solo exhibition by Astha Butail. ‘Locus of Being’, at GALLERYSKE, Bangalore is is a meditation on our shared desire to understand the relationship of earth and non-earth notions, real or imaginary, mundane and extraordinary, objects that surround us to that which is invisible yet occupies a huge space of existence.

The show features drawing, assemblage, interactive installation, sculpture and performance. Translating her long-term research on Rig Vedic text, Butail draws on its philosophies to understand the relationship between perceivable material reality and non-material or intangible principles of nature.

At the heart of the show is ‘Immobile Mobile,’ 2017, an interactive installation of sixty empty frames with circular heads where the artist initiates the idea of play with the viewer. As the discs descend at varying speeds and times, they create a ticking sound, reminiscent of a metronome, of repetition and rhythm. Butail’s interest further extends to concepts of akasha lit would mean a sort of upper sky and its characteristic shabda, word or a sound exerted into a space. It also queries the dynamic between static and moving elements, purusha, lit a stillness and strong being within and prakriti. lit the energy to put things in action.

In the work, ‘The sun will rise’ modeled on the rhythm of the movement of the sun and the definition of a day. delicate white lines constructed with paper fill thirty one frames. Three frames are empty for those days she was unable to perform the ritual, which she performed at the end of each day. Each frame represents a day and each line a minute. Forming an almost straight line, it appears to move or shift rendering the tick tock rhythm and the narrative cycle that define a month.
The first frame starts with 5:14 pm, and has 14 lines.

Butail’s interest in the evolution of the frame and the oral tradition extends to a new series of threaded work. Butail uses the mechanics of musical instruments like the flute, drum and harmonium to speak of functional redundancy. These works cannot be played as instruments as the lack of tension and aural ‘vacuum’ rendered by the work is analogous to a lost dialogue. Highlighting gaps in communication, they reference cultural loss, unheard or missed points of crossover in everyday relationships.

In another room the space is changed completely with an interactive installation
10 directions, interacting with one own self. The 10 asymmetrical drawers which the viewers can open, are with 25 unique poetic messages from each drawer from the 10 points of references. The human nature (through compassion, love, freedom, calmness, pain, hatred, failure, defeat, sorrow etc) exist in a constant state of flux, and this dialogue is created in the installation 10 directions. As if this flux of movement makes you move like a wave almost constantly again either into inaction or action. Through this new interactive work she teases the viewers to play and experiment with a set of 10 asymetrical drawers with numbers on the floor and cards in each drawer and the matter they lead you to.