That there abides in nature a certain pure matter, which, being discovered and brought by art to perfection, converts to itself proportionally all imperfect bodies that it touches.
(Mary Anne Atwood, A Suggestive Inquiry Into Hermetic Mystery)
Anant Foundation for the Arts presents its inaugural award exhibition, Propositions in Paper 2024: The JK Paper Award for the Arts.
Featuring a solo presentation by the award winner, Sandeep Suneriya, and a group exhibition by Anshu Singh, Debojit Roy, Rutvi Vakharia, and Sriparna Dutta-recipients of the Certificate of Recognition.
As in the Aristotelian schema-on the theory of form, from his Metaphysics-of taking the substance of a thing, breaking it down to its form and analysing it into matter, layer by layer until the last residues of form have been brushed away to lay the prima materia bare, this exhibition posits paper as prima material.
Propositions that are variously artistic, scribal, typographical, transcriptive across oral testimonies, sounds, sights as well as techniques activate the mediatic qualities of paper. The show touches upon the desire to probe into the emphasis paper lays on the relationship between material, tool and language, characterised by a chain of transferences between idea to notation, memory to notation, notation to transmission. How can this chain of transferences pin notative efforts within documentation, imagination, record keeping, and preservation in the line of accuracy and truth when the relationship of these very notions to information remains immensely convoluted?
- Sohorpem Kazingmei, 2024