Important Notice

Although N.S. Harsha’s recent works are closely related to their predecessors in terms of physical scale and crisply ordered figuration, they mark a sharp departure in subject. Moving away from documenting the ‘specific’, the artist has turned to what he calls the ‘absurd’, posing unanswerable questions and portraying his delicate figures in unimaginable situations. In the present lot for example, Harsha paints a grid of figures floating around... Although N.S. Harsha’s recent works are closely related to their predecessors in terms of physical scale and crisply ordered figuration, they mark a sharp departure in subject. Moving away from documenting the ‘specific’, the artist has turned to what he calls the ‘absurd’, posing unanswerable questions and portraying his delicate figures in unimaginable situations. In the present lot for example, Harsha paints a grid of figures floating around sewing machines in what is apparently a zero-gravity environment. Deliberately adding to the viewer’s bewilderment, the figures are stitching various, intricately detailed swathes of foliage rather than fabric, and, according to the inscription at the lower edge, do not seem to know why any more than the viewer.

Speaking about this painting in the context of Harsha’s recent engagement with absurdist art, Priya Pall notes, “Casting a bemused but amenable gaze at humankind and its follies, he expounds on the absurd with another work: ‘We don’t know why we are stitching plants.’ ‘My work is slowly moving towards the idea of meaninglessness or the absurd. It is a significant shift from my earlier engagement with specificity of ‘location’ (geographical/ political/ social/ cultural),’ says Harsha. ‘We don’t know why we are stitching plants,’ is one of the first of his works to move in this direction where the title written on the painting itself declares a disassociation with the meaning in the gesture. ‘Though the gesture of stitching is pegged in reality, the plot is hidden in loss of gravity and the absurd act of stitching plants. I guess the thought is as absurd as the act portrayed!...I enjoyed the pleasant chaos created because of loss of gravity in human figures! It acts as a device to remove certain ideas of firmly grounded meaning in this painting and to venture into those areas of the obscure and the unknown.’ Nonetheless, however absurd the act may be, all members of the group are epitomised by it, and out of this shared context, meanings, content and patterns may be formulated within the group” (“The Individual and the Collective”, Art Concerns, October 2009).

“True to Harsha’s signature style, the works are panoramic in format but miniature in their rendition. Vast expanses are rendered intimate by highly detailed and individuated figures who, in their continual animated state, maintain a lively interplay between the minute and the whole. They constantly challenge the viewers to make their own discoveries of the whimsical, easily recognisable motifs and ingeniously placed details that simultaneously allow for an overall structure and for repetition and difference. The works are presented either in perfect grids or as entangled webs, both of which grant access to the artist to manipulate his audience from being casual passers-by into curious viewers who end up engaging with the works at a deeper level by connecting with the artist’s thoughts and experiencing the sense of belonging that the artist so skillfully induces in them through his works” (Ibid.).

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