The Work of Art: Iteration in Multiples, Fragments and Reflection

The Guild is delighted to announce the opening of 2nd exhibition at The Guild.

Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction inherently contains the premise of linear time and progress. The latter remains, since the 19th century a central tenet of enlightenment philosophy - leading to liberalism's idea of progress, and enshrined in capital. Benjamin's conception of the “aura” of art, at risk in his text, positions the “aura” as reverential. Inherent in this “aura” is the assumption of linear history, whose breakage Benjamin foretold in the Arcades Project. Iteration implies a mechanistic process, utilized at at different time frames creating layers  - 1966, 1983, 1996, 2001 and so on until 2013, and repetitions thereof, address the multitudes, reflect urban sprawl- and address the changes in time and context while reusing the same mechanistic processes to create works that are recreated in different times and contexts. This iteration in fragments of time, produces not only the work, but the various contexts in which they are exhibited and produced, and in true Benjamin spirit, the scene in which they are considered, travelling in and out of art historical contexts, and touching upon various time frames and moments, engineering the fragments and frames through which the products of these mechanistic iterative processes can be seen. The commissioning and screening of the Films BLUR on Baiju Parthan and Messenger of the Free Zone on Himmat Shah, go beyond iteration, although they are also products of a mechanistic process. Here the self-reflexivity of the artistic process is deemed enduring. A process whose central figure is the artist, remains eternal.                                   
 
Artists: 

Amit Ambalal | Anjolie Ela Menon |  Anupam Sud | Arpana Caur | Baiju Parthan | Gulammohammed Sheikh | Himanshu S. |  Jogen Chowdhury | Jyoti Bhatt | K. G. Subramanyan | K. Laxma Goud | Manjit Bawa | Riyas Komu | Sathyanand Mohan | Sakti Burman |Somnath Hore | Viraj Naik | Vivan Sundaram   

Films: 

BLUR 
A film on Baiju Parthan
Producer : The Guild
Director: Ravi Shekhar

Messenger of the Free Zone
A film on Himmat Shah 
Producer : The Guild
Director: Ravi Shekhar

 

We look forward to welcome you at The Guild.