It’s not imposing in size — this bald, unadorned ceramic sculpture measuring 20”x11”x1.5”. Yet, there’s something disconcerting about a structure that asks you to Step In although its disparate architectural elements don’t form a logical space of comfort. Rather, its stairs and turret, niches and pitched roof, lead you nowhere but to dead ends from where you can only retrace your steps to the starting point, not move forward.
Does Gigi Scaria, who showed his works at Kaee Contemporary in September, mean this maze of dead ends to be a metaphor for civilisation? But civilisation can’t retrace its steps to the starting point: it can only look back to rue suicidal missteps. Such as the mountain of logs in Memory Shadow, a painting of graphic articulation that hints at an impersonal tunnel vision of development. Will wisdom prevail in the future or will entire mountain ranges be walled in — as in Wrapped — if they get in the way of urbanisation? And so Papyrus — an ancient witness of man’s dubious progress — warns of a future sci-fi topography where the withered carcass of an uprooted tree gets replaced by decay-proof metal pillars that look like rockets pretending to be trees.
Scaria’s Lockdown is an installation of metal rooms with locked doors, perched precariously askew on top of each other — no alignment. Another suggestion emerges beyond that of the Covid-19 lockdowns: the more crowded the planet gets, the more hermetically isolated people may be as hell becomes other people.
Jagannath Panda, the other artist in the show, is more theatrical in approaching the narrative of multiple conflicts in industrial societies. Across a wasteland of bleak, grey acrylic, trudge tiny silhouettes of migrant labourers while birds act as the Custodian of Untold Truth. But in their regal plumage they share a kinship with the 77”x40”x28” predator raven who symbolises The Profiteer. Its towering size is, however, completely dwarfed by three smallish works which show the heads of deer pitifully ensnared in patterned moulding (picture), a most distressing sight.
