As I Remember | Project88

As I Remember

Mahesh Baliga

‘He who has no memory makes one out of paper’

– Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Surviving in squares with measured breaths and with little licenses to venture out to the places one belongs to. Things lost in the present days appear in flashes as moments of respite and sometimes also triggering the urgency to connect and relive the short moments of those first encounters :fear, love, death, short walks. What does one do when one fails to perform the everyday, the empty walls become scenes where the regular will be rescripted. The memories are evoked through senses, the saline buttery smell bringing to mind the big paper dosas being served and train tickets of travels and hurried runs to safety/death. We all have our personal associations with the sense of normalcy. The small and possible wishes became impossible; the wish to see the hippopotamus Dimpy in the Zoo and the friends one often meets. The desire to escape the monotony makes one take shelter in quirky imaginations too.

Paper Dosa, Casein on board, 12 x 10 inches, 2020

I missed my studio space like a person longing for ones missed limbs, as if my mind had been ruptured and became vulnerable to the blank noise. I would imagine going to the studio, reimagine myself working there, going back to my thinking space, summoning that space mentally.

The only thing that I retain beyond the cautious breaths, the fear of that human touch, which is a significant connect to the emotional life, is the act of painting ,the haptic act of touching is retained in the process of painting; touching the canvas with colours, being caught in the act of visual recollections of the images that became timeless when the real time is melting, all the while changing the way I look and how I am going to remember.

Installation view at Project 88

Installation view at Project 88

“The making of the image is more important than how it transforms images from real life, which, for me, are always taken up into the environment created with the pigments and the forms.”

– Excerpt from c onversation between Aveek Sen and Mahesh Baliga

View the book here

“I noticed what appeared to be symbols, recurring motifs and hints of stories as I re-traced the path of the painter’s imagination and memory manifested in the paintings. But it was as if the Rosetta Stone that would decode this pictorial language had been put just beyond my reach. I had to allow myself to lose and find my way through this private hieroglyphic landscape, like Hansel and Gretel trying to find their way back home through the forest after the birds had eaten up their trail of bread. “

– Aveek Sen

Gallery

Artist Capturing Cosmos, Casein on board, 12 x 10 inches, 2020

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