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Random take

Lauren Portada's exhibition scores on colour and composition but loses out on coherence

SEEN AND UNSEEN Fields at a Distance by Lauren Portada

The gallery statement explaining Lauren Portada's exhibition, The Parallels! A New Installation of Painting and Sculpture, reads: "Everything is what it is and nothing is what it seems." And goes on to say: "Drawing on specific references rooted in the artist's personal and temporal spaces, this exhibition of heavily painted and constructed images and sculpture asks us to decide where truth ends and fiction begins... . With its centre firmly out of focus, there is no narrative in this exhibition — there is no time, no space... The work of Lauren Portada asks to us to reconcile with the built-up palette, the accumulative ascent to the surface of the painting."

A New Yorker currently in Bangalore on a Fulbright Fellowship, Lauren holds a B.A. from Fordham University, Lincoln Centre, NYC, and MFA from University of Illinois, Chicago. She has exhibited in Chicago and New York and was part of ArtChicago 2005 and NOVA Young Art Fair 2005.

There are three distinct components in the exhibition. The first is a set of unframed paintings in small format with titles such as Fields at a Distance, I Imagined it Drowned Under the Rice Paddies or the Sea, The Road Ran Down Hill at a Slight Incline and Would it Somehow Involve the Stars among others.

The second is an installation made of wooden frames and partitions, complemented by the sound of rasping bamboos (reportedly recorded in Cubbon Park) while the third is a small book with a folded and expandable sheet, which bears a graph-like marking on the one side and on the other, some disjointed statements.Seen collectively, the works do not seem to have any specific connection or association with each other. The viewer cannot be faulted if s/he sees them as nothing more than a random assemblage, formed with no express purpose.

There is some worth in the paintings in terms of colour and composition, but then, the long-winding titles and (more particularly) the spectre of the so-called wooden installation in their midst diminish the impact. The component of sound in the other two works is also not really expressive. In fact, the whistling swish of bamboos in the wooden sculpture is quite scratchy.The exhibition closes today at No. 1, Shanti Road Studio/Gallery.

ATHREYA

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