|
 Calangute,
Goa is a popular destination amongst tourists who come to India.
In the past decade, Calangute has also become famous for another
reason-the Kerkar Art Galleries and their owner, Subodh Kerkar.
These Galleries house, amongst others, the collections of Kerkar,
a grey-eyed, doctor, painter, sculptor, potter, installation
artist, and general Renaissance man.
Kerkar
describes himself as a watercolorist who trained under his
father, also a prominent painter in Goa about 25 years ago.
About 15 years ago, Kerkar tired of the lack of creativity in
the medical profession and decided to devote himself fulltime to
the pursuit of art. Since then, he has been painting, sculpting
in copper, scrap metal and handbuilding terracotta objects and
he has housed many of his works in the Galleries--two colonial
style houses he fashioned after Portuguese era structures.
“Traditionally white was a color reserved for churches in the
Portuguese era so houses could be blue, green, ochre and a sort
of Indian red,” said Dr. Kerkar, explaining his choice of façades
for the galleries.
If
there is one aspect of his work that strikes the onlooker
immediately, it is that Kerkar applies his artistic sensibility
to all media and genres whether it is carving into scrap iron
for relief and screen work in doors, mounting figures onto
anchors doubling up as bases or focusing his vision on the
design of his various gallery spaces. His sources for material
are varied. He laughs merrily as he notes that he had obtained
“even free scrap because government agencies did not know what
to do with it.” He adds that he has been given substantial
support in the form of scrap iron from Goa’s shipbuilding
industry.
 Pointing
to a recent exhibit of lampshades and objects termed Ellipticals
that were displayed at the Kronen Galleries in Germany, he
explains that the show depicts his obsession with the elliptical
shape as expressive of the life of a people who are surrounded
by the sea. In his paintings there are unmistakable references
to elliptical shapes whether its in the exaggerated shape of the
eyes of a woman, the streamlined outline of a boat in the far
background of a canvas, the shape of fishes. In his terracotta
work too there is a continuous bias towards the oval whether its
in the cast of a section of the body of a fish, the
almost-Hellenic elongated masks, or the stretched and supine
Sphinx-like figures. Subtle references to the sea abound in the
judicious use of blue paint in the eyes and bodies of his
subjects, serving as a reminder of the raison d’etre for the
streamlined shapes.
Kerkar
emphasizes the role of dissatisfaction that has kept him alive
as an artist. Even after he moved from the medical profession
toward art, he faced the dilemma of boredom when he exclusively
painted watercolor. “I was still a technician at that time.
Suddenly and unexpectedly, when I took a month off to do some
work in sculpture in Delhi, I found my style. I think the key
there was that I was continuously experimenting and trying
different things.”
According
to Kerkar, the most important issue facing Goan art today, is
the lack of teachers who practice as artists. “The teachers in
the two prominent art institutions, Goa College of Art and Kala
Academy, rarely practice their art. Teachers are just looking at
their work as a job” he said. He also cited the lack of
frequent art related events as a reason for the disinterest
amongst young students. “There was an annual art camp to be
organized by a local institution in Goa. Now the last time I
remember that camp being held was 15 years ago, when I was being
presented as a young artist!”
 For
the past year Kerkar has made a departure from previous work by
consciously focusing on nature and natural motifs in
installation art. He displays through photographs a series of
installations he has undertaken at his own cost on beach fronts
around Goa. These installations imitate wave movements,
particular light situations and other natural motifs and uses
materials found on the seashore such as mussels and sand. “I
do this just as an experiment and it costs so little. Some
people also get entertained,” he admits. A future project
includes a coffee table book with illustrations of these
installations and verse to describe them. He is also currently
developing a sculpture garden around a new house for himself.
This sculpture garden is in an agricultural field where he has
created an artificial pond, natural benches and dreams of having
organic footbridges which “do not appear built”. Kerkar sees
this space as a demonstration model for governments and others
who may wish to see a living sample of his potential for work on
parks and natural environments.
|
|
