Mekhala Bahl’s work is an open invitation to the viewer. To come and find your own reference points and start walking on a path, that would either take you back to your cherished memories, or to a time in future with many possibilities. When I caught up with the artist at Gallery Espace, mounting the show with the help of friend and art historian Latika Gupta a day before it opened, I found myself reviving connection with two beautiful trips taken long back, and now tucked away in recesses of memory, almost forgotten. “That’s what I want my work to do, to draw in the viewer, to engage and to lead them to possibilities,” says Bahl, who started studying at College of Art, New Delhi before getting transferred to Rhode Island School of Design, U.S., from where she finished her Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking. Her works with whom I found instant connect were “Jacket,” 2016, and “Box,” 2016, both etchings on paper with collage, ink and lead. But, the entire body of work that makes up her latest exhibition, “is that | that is” features works that are so animated and engrossing that the most insipid of minds would be forced to revv up. “I wouldn’t want to tell you what it is all about. I want the viewer to engage and be so absorbed so as to get lost, in this world, and create your own. The purpose of the work is defeated if it doesn’t prod the viewer to think,” says the artist, who even at a relatively young age of 35 is mature in many ways, the rectitude of her works being just one of them. The most interesting thing about Mekhala’s oeuvre is that it straddles that sweet zone between pure figurative and pure abstract genres where neither of the two feels left out. The first impression is that of an abstract form, but then, as you start reading the work, there is something that allows you to enter the work and be led by its intricate details from one corner to the other, from one end to the other. As I pore over a work with a rich ochre background, she almost reads my mind and says, “For instance, this work titled “Green Rocket.” It is like taking the viewer’s eye through the rocket and then following it across the canvas, like a snooker ball whizzing on the snooker table.” When she explains, the etching with collage, ink, and lead on paper assumes a more pulsating entity in my mind, though I personally feel that the rocket’s target, the yellow blob at the upper right hand corner could be an equally powerful entry point. As I start moving from one work to the other, looking deeper, closer, they become more vibrant and start heaving with possibilities. Some are dense, some busy, some sparse, and some idle, but each work has a dreamy quality to it, forcing you to abandon the noise outside your head and focus on the dots waiting to be connected by you into a narrative.Bahl has also attempted to insert text as a layer to some of the works, which lends a different kind of gravitas to these works. The text is in the form of randomly selected boxes from various comic strips, juxtaposed in a manner to create a totally new narrative, which then becomes the hook to draw in the viewer. The hook is what Bahl is good at, a skill that she seems to be having a good grip on even at this age. Perhaps, it comes from talent, perhaps from the clarity in her mind about how she wants to go about her work and her career. “I don’t do shows very frequently. My last solo was nearly five-and-a-half years ago,” she says. When asked how she negotiates the pace of the changing market, she responds, “It has been a conscious decision to keep the market away from my studio. If I did not care enough for my work, I wouldn’t be doing it. In fact, artists who really care for their work, for the market of their work, they will have to work with blinders on and stay away from the market.” That’s lucid, as clear as her works. “Is that | that is” runs at Gallery Espace, 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony, through March 24, 11 am - 7 pmFollow@ARTINFOIndia
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