Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Atul Dodiya—Bombay: Labyrinth/Laboratory

Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Atul Dodiya—Bombay: Labyrinth/Laboratory

by John McGee

Atul Dodiya, Missing, 2000 (Image courtesy Japan Foundation Asia Center)

Mahatma Gandhi walks through the door of the New York gallery where Joseph Beuys, standing covered in a blanket and carrying a crook cane, communes with a coyote. Chelsea and Bill Clinton, laughing, not watching where they are going, sashay past the Putins in front of the Taj Mahal. This isn't the build-up to a joke, but descriptions of two paintings by Atul Dodiya, whose jumbled pop figures and historical events can be as socially introspective as they are topically amusing. 

Sometimes resembling the aftermath of a tornado in a Bombay newspaper's slide library, Dodiya's allegorical collages are meant to reflect the culture of Indian cities and the aspirations of their inhabitants. Dodiya, regarded as one of the most important painters in India today, weaves a range of images into a postmodern fabric of ideas: autobiographical narratives focused on the family, pop-culture fantasies born of Indian movies, the gods of traditional folk customs, global consumerism, and leaders of politics and the arts. 

Dodiya's Bombay (Mumbai is the official name) is a city that curator Ranjit Hoskote calls both a "terrifying labyrinth with risks waiting at every turn" and "a laboratory of social possibilities." Dodiya shows how city dwellers lead dual lives. One is at the frenetic pace of a busy schedule. The other is in a slow-motion internal world where people "retreat into a magical realm of radiant saints and superheroes, political martyrs and screen gods." 

Dodiya's recent paintings on large, rolling storefront shutters merge these elements of hectic, everyday streetlife and floating worlds of fantasy. This show constructs a model of Dodiya's "urban psychology," by turning the exhibition hall into an interactive "maze of 'object-spaces'" via the shutter paintings as well as other paintings, drawings and an installation using gates, ladders and billboards. 

This is the second in a three-part series of solo exhibitions by contemporary Asian artists (starting with Indonesian artist Heri Dono last fall) at the Japan Foundation Asia Center in Akasaka. The Asia Center, first established as the ASEAN Cultural Center in 1990, is a branch of the Japan Foundation dedicated to "promoting intellectual exchange and cultural vitality in the Asian region." 

Dodiya, 41, also participated in the 2001 Yokohama Triennale, the international art expo cosponsored by the Japan Foundation.

This exhibition was held Jun 30-Aug 4, 2001 at the Japan Foundation Forum in Akasaka, Tokyo, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

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