Art Basel | Statements OVR
Domestic Animals
Shreyas Karle
June 19-26, 2020
Domestic Animals is a reflection of the artist’s home-space where the household objects become attitudes and gestures by the virtue of being liberated from their duties while still performing them. Baudrillard defines them as being symbolically castrated for their role play-similar to that of domestic pets.
Shreyas Karle’s practice over a period of past few years engages in the rendering of Domestic Objects as metaphorical museum settlers, (dissolving their domesticity and usability) by leaning towards form than function. They are in a perpetual play of adapting arrangement into atmosphere. This act is ritualized until play becomes function itself. The working desk from the artist’s house plays witness to the drawing and the making of the proposal thus making it a centric element to the thinking, working and the display of the proposed work. A morbid but serine green tablecloth (largely used in hospital recovery rooms) further camouflages the desk and allows trivial gestures of the objects to be displayed. The two folded blankets (inside- out and outside- in) on the desk, stare at one another’s unequivocal resemblance. The dispersed and edited domesticity settles on three different planes where every object either subtly display their birth defects or eccentricity of their adulthood. Many a time the objects generate a play involving the artist’s five-year-old daughter’s purposeless collection. The mirror, the terrazzo and the cup-stand reflect her diachronic presence thus creating a shift in the artist’s authorship and curatorial claim of the works. The project provides an insight into the gestural capacity of the domestic semiotic system. It identifies with a silent violence that is taking place within itself in its stillness while one is looking, while one is also waiting for overwhelming and grander performance to take place.
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About the Artist
b. 1981 Bombay, India / Lives and works in Bombay, India
Shreyas Karle has completed his Diploma in Painting from L.S.Raheja School of Art, Mumbai, India in 2002 and his Post Diploma from M.S.University, Baroda, India in 2008. He was commissioned a project for the Aichi Triennial 2016 in Japan and was part of the NGMA show titled- ‘Come-in’ (Interior Design as a Contemporary Art medium), Germany in 2016. In 2015 he was invited to participate in the New Museum Triennial, ‘Surround Audience’ in New York, USA and was part of the ‘First Look: Collecting Contemporary’ at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, USA the same year. He was also part of ‘The Doorstep’ a group show at Jhaveri Contemporary curated by Gyan Panchal, Mumbai, India in 2015. He was assigned a new commission for the Changwon Biennial, South Korea, ‘Shade of the moon’ in 2014 . He was part of the first edition of Kochi- Muziris Biennial, India in the year 2012 and was on a project- ‘Commercial Break’, curated by Neville Wakefield for the 54th Venice Biennial, Italy. He has been invited as a visiting faculty at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design, University of Michigan, USA in 2017 and for Kyoto University of Art and Design Graduate School as a Guest Lecturer in 2018. He has been a resident artist at Gasworks, London in 2013, Rote Fabrik, Zurich, Switzerland in 2012 and the Montalvo Arts Center, California, USA in 2010. He has been awarded the FICA artist award for emerging artist in 2009,Bodhi award in 2008 and the Nasreen Mohamedi scholarship from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, India in 2005. Shreyas Karle has also been the Director of Sandarbh – a site-specific artist initiative in India. He is the co-director of CONA Foundation and KATCONA Design Cell- a project space in North-Mumbai with co-artist Hemali Bhuta.