Important Notice

In his artistic practice spanning photography, video, sculpture and installation, Arunkumar H.G. negotiates serious issues that affect contemporary society, using humourous and subversive images. The present lot, a wood and fiberglass installation finished to a high-gloss fuchsia pink with automotive paint, represents the endless flows of information that today’s youth consume on a day-to-day basis through various media channels. Portraying a... In his artistic practice spanning photography, video, sculpture and installation, Arunkumar H.G. negotiates serious issues that affect contemporary society, using humourous and subversive images. The present lot, a wood and fiberglass installation finished to a high-gloss fuchsia pink with automotive paint, represents the endless flows of information that today’s youth consume on a day-to-day basis through various media channels. Portraying a scene familiar in every household with children, the artist offers viewers two young figures seated in front of a television, as a ten minute long video by the artist titled ‘From the Cable’ plays in a constant loop. The almost catatonic figures stare fixedly at the flickering screen, as if immobilized by some enchantment that it delivers.

While the television, or ‘idiot box’, symbolizes the perpetual streams of images and information that we are bombarded with, the figures of Gandhi’s three monkeys that sit below the screen ironically represent the virtual impossibility of filtering what our children are exposed to anymore. It is as if he artist is contending that today, the notion of ‘see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil’ has been reduced to an ideal, impossible to realize.

Titled, Offspring, this piece was inspired by the artist’s own children, who, deeply influenced by the numerous cartoon characters they encountered on television, have disengaged animals from their natural environments and contexts. It is for this reason that Arunkumar has given the figures in this piece the countenances of cartoon animals; while the one seated on the chair has the face of a pig, the one seated on the ground in front has that of a bear cub.

Arunkumar “…brings in Neo-Pop sensibilities in his art practice and uses ready-made objects such as toys, carpets, plastic, ceramics, television monitors, cow dung and hay and also displays a high degree of skill in the sculpted images. In the interplay of playful/absurd imagery and serious concerns, Kumar articulates a language that might appear dense to the viewer, for the layered associations become clear through conversations with the artist. But once the subtexts interconnect, an irony that underlines the fragility of the human condition emerges. Arun Kumar makes a powerful and coherent critique, opening out the possibilities of the socially transformative role of art” (Amrita Gupta-Singh, “Negotiating the Sacred and Profane”, Artconcerns.com, accessed February 2009).

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