What recollections do you posses of Franz Kafka and Sigmund Freud? Much that memory evokes is language, which provides the mind with visuals of phantasmagorical mayhem: in Kafka, the man turning into insect, and, in Freud, the man ripped into the three of Id, Ego and Super Ego. The veritable aspect being that both are remembered in the medium of words, of language, of the linear.
Rohit Raj Mehndiratta, 44, noted architect, and now artist, explores the matter in Kafka and Freud via the visual counterpart, using three mediums (“for one never suffices”, as Mehndiratta puts it): oil and acrylic, pen and ink, photograph and digital media. In an exhibition titled Navigating Mindscapes at the Arpana Caur Art Gallery, he showcases a study of subjects such as alienation, sub-conscious identity, and the giving away of the self in perturbed, contemporary times.
I found myself contemplating a piece, in pen and ink, where my mind was sure that it could perceive a maze distressed by a tempest of overpopulating lines, but then Mehndiratta asks me to look at the title, it reads “Time”. The first question rises: how does abstract work, especially when it deals with representations of ideas like Id, Ego and Super Ego, and their relation with Time, gain a title? “In most cases, the interpretation comes after the work nears a concluding point. When I was working on “Time”, I worked with intuitive muscle art, wherein my hands followed each sensitive suggestion that arrived from the sub-conscience,” says Mehndratta. He takes a pause and adds, “Naming the pieces is a conscious pressure at the moment. I do want to reach a point where I can just leave it untitled.”
Rohit Raj Mehndiratta’s “Mindscape-I”
Mehndiratta has worked as an architect, he studied architecture and urbanism at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has decades of experience in the field, the Jaisalmer Airport is one of his several projects. This happens to be why his pen and ink is strong. But, as an architect, the pen and ink is a blueprint, which later materialises into a physical form. In the artwork, it finalises itself on the page. He has an opinion on the matter: “This — the pen and ink piece, my art — is much more satisfying. In architecture, you compromise with five clients over five different blueprints at a time, but when I’m in my room working on a piece of art, I’m happy, I do as I wish.” Mehndiratta’s pleasure in the freedom in one’s work espouses an attitude of experimentation.
His index finger runs in concentric circles, in oblique curves, as he highlights which bit of the work represents what aspect of the overall philosophy. For example, in his piece titled “The Conscious”, he is particular about the division of the three members; the battle or violence between the three is highlighted in a piece with colour and a certain movement, while a balance is shown between them in another piece with them being granted compartmental positions; but, he always draws the Id outside the chaos. “The Id — that narcissist, pleasure-driven child inside — is free of the repression that society creates, the ego and super ego are under its influence,” says Mehndiratta, “there has to be a conceptual overtone; this understanding binds the work.”
As we reach the oil and acrylic works, Mehndiratta begins to discuss his thematic concern with Kafka’s work: “I’m not as interested in the insect in Metamorphosis as I’m in the dream from which Gregor Samsa wakes up turns into an insect. I wanted to explore this dream using Freud’s ideas; I believe the dream points at the pursuit of identity.”
In a world where the multiplication of an individual’s identity (digital, financial, professional, lineage, historical, national) has spiralled out of control, Mehndiratta believes that there is a stable, integral self-conscious identity. “This sub-conscious identity is our potential, a sign of what we can be. And, it’s not associated with thought; it’s a sensation.”
Use of ‘notations’
The work is also endowed with Mehndiratta’s use of particular ideas, one of them being ‘notations’. Notations in his work are the lines, curves, which tend to represent the mood of the work. Furthermore, to express emotional tones he uses both colour and the movement of the lines/notations. This begins from his work in pen and ink and steps into his work in oil and acrylic. It’s in his photographic and digital medium that something altogether different takes place.
“I use different mediums because each medium is an opportunity for something new, more meaningful,” says Mehndiratta. Does this also suggest that he might use another medium or two? “I do have installations in mind for my next exhibit, which is already in progress,” states the artist.
In digital media, he juxtaposes visuals, and also fetishises certain objects – in a piece titled Doors , which is a collection of slices of numerous wooden doors he’s clicked pictures of during a holiday in Himachal Pradesh, the doors mentally evoke the fear of what lays hidden behind, or what is being hid by us. “I wanted to emphasise on the collective amnesia we practice, how catastrophe is forgotten in a matter of days by the global population. The locks on the doors are symbols pertaining to out act of locking things up inside,” shares Mehndiratta.
His work is a composite of those ideas of Kafka and Freud that never recede into irrelevance, of his experience with literature and architecture over the course of his life, even the graphic patterns his mother designed for his notebook covers during his school life, and the way life grows formidable and repressive in today’s technological and service industrial world. “Unlike Kafka, who believes his ultimate end is in death, I imagine mine to be in redemption,” tells the optimistic artist.
(On till March 28 at Arpana Caur Art Gallery, New Delhi)
Published - March 26, 2018 02:02 pm IST
