SOLO2010, The Impossibility of Flight
November 6th - 23rd
The Impossibility of Flight by Nayan Kulkarni.
...... when I suddenly discovered a sail to the eastward, and on our larboard bow. She appeared to be a large ship, and was coming nearly athwart us, being probably twelve or fifteen miles distant. None of my companions had as yet discovered her, and I forbore to tell them of her for the present, lest we might again be disappointed of relief. [...] They immediately sprang to their feet, again indulging in the most extravagant demonstrations of joy, weeping, laughing in an idiotic manner, jumping, stamping upon the deck, tearing their hair, and praying and cursing by turns. I was so affected by their conduct, as well as by what I considered a sure prospect of deliverance, that I could not refrain from joining in with their madness, and gave way to the impulses of my gratitude and ecstasy by lying and rolling on the deck, clapping my hands, shouting, and other similar acts, until I was suddenly called to my recollection, and once more to the extreme human misery and despair, by perceiving the ship all at once with her stern fully presented toward us, and steering in a direction nearly opposite to that in which I had at first perceived her.
Edgar Allen Poe,from The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
For this installation I attempted to reinterpret ideas that I have been playing with in the studio for some time. The show is a kind of snapshot of my studio and my thinking process. These artworks are a way of working through ideas, so rather than a singular immersive installation this show is more like an airing of stuff.
I have completed these ongoing works in respect to the gallery space and its relationship to the water outside. Although each piece functions independently I hope that the relationships between them create a narrative, and it is this narrative between the works that represents my practice and some of its underlying concerns and motivations.
When we flee we do not flee each thing one at a time and one after another, according to a regular and indefinite enumeration. [...]. Flight now makes each thing rise up as though it were all things and the whole of things - not like a secure order in which one might take shelter, nor even like a hostile order against which one must struggle, but as the movement that steals, and steals away. Thus flight not only reveals reality as being this whole (a totality without gap and without issue) that one must flee: flight is this very whole that steals away, and to which it draws us even while repelling us. Panic flight is this movement of stealing away [...] as a whole that steals away from which there is no longer a place to steal away to. And thus it accomplishes itself finally as the impossibility of flight.
Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation
At the core of my work is a fascination with the moment at which something changes not a change because of something animated within the work, but rather a change that is brought about through the coincidence of the viewers gaze upon the work. So anamorphous, a sparkle, a blink or a shimmer become agents in the work as well as material effects. These phenomena are all dependent upon a spatial and optical relationship between light, the artwork and the viewer.
The work I make is not medium specific. However, I hope that the work exposes my interest with materials and technologies. In all of my work the role of light whether it be artificial, depicted and natural is fundamental. I have been researching the use of light since the early 1990’s and this ongoing exploration is a critical element in what drives my practice.
For further information on study Fine Art please contact David Baldry on 01473 338000.
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