Project 88 is pleased to present Shreyas Karle’s second solo exhibition with the gallery - Unnecessary alcove that enquires into the notion of archiving the domestic.
As the fingernails attain a certain length, the fingers itch to scratch the surface of the body. They scavenge for the wax accumulated in the hair, in the black holes of the nose, in the unseen openings of the ears, filling the crevices between the nails and the fingers with residue. There is a further attempt to collect the dirt-wax from all the finger deposits and mould it into one. One uses the little fingernail or a bluntly sharp tool to excavate these deposits. This act is carried out discreetly where questions on personal hygiene are not raised. This act ceases with the intervention of the nail-cutter (a fearful tool, always functioning at the edge of the skin and the nail), chipping away the dirt collectors with pulsating caution. In this process, one realizes the hierarchy of one hand over the other. One cannot exactly specify the time when one becomes aware of the use of the nails; I presume it happens with certain ease.
The fingers become nails, transferring the unsaid thoughts- thus enabling this icky habit. Similarly, thoughts grow into images, scratching surfaces for their deposited residue. The objects (collected residue) get rolled between two fingers unintentionally. The unnecessity of these object-beings makes one think about and without their existence. The tools (ideas and approaches) become redundant after the making of the objects like the nails that lie lifeless after being cut. An alcove in a house stares back at the onlooker as a depression in the wall. Why was the need to puncture the wall? It seems almost like the wall is resisting its straightness, as if losing its male virginity to the depression. This unneeded act transforms in a procreative space- a permanently impregnated (space-belly) hollow from within, ever ready to copulate. Objects come in and out of the alcove, never to be born in it. Yet every time they occupy the hollow, they evoke meaning. The objects in themselves as the residue of the scratched surfaces hold no entity if they do not occupy space. When one walks the length of the wall one tends to fall into the alcove.
In his second solo at Project88 that takes place after a gap of seven years, Shreyas Karle inquires into the notion of archiving the domestic. If one tends to museumize the domestic, would one contradict the institution or become one? This exhibit is an extension of Shreyas Karle’s earlier project (Redux Redux: Enter by the side door) commissioned by the Aichi Triennial (Japan, 2016). Unnecessary Alcove is curated by the artist in three sections. The first section has objects that lie in the dilemma of being the art works; the second section relooks at the idea of exchange and the dissolving authorship through a series of four collaborations and the third section underlining the necessity of seeing.
Text by Shreyas Karle
