Indispositions

Talha Rathore’s recently concluded show at Chawkandi Art Gallery titled Indispositions, engages with the organic form through a microscopic lens. Using miniature techniques Rathore has created works that invoke thoughtful introspection and mindful deliberation.

Her works are rendered with the yearning fallibility of human perception, the delicate forms pulsating with quiet energy, knotted with the febrile viscosity of life. Her work seems to almost walk out from the pages of an old manuscript, aged with the wisdom, quipped with gauzy tenacity of cognizance. Her steady use of the medium, earthen tones, the repetitive cellular formations allow for a sentient state of mindful repose.

The gentle quality of her work has the ability to transport, the observing body mimics the subtlety of the movement with her work. In Polluted Speculations II the necks cranes as the with branches of the tree. Her works appear almost weightless, held in square by the contours of its cellular patterns, a delicate stroke pulled away, it could almost fall apart.

The soft, airy quality of her work allows for the viewer to engage with mindful caution, her masterful use of the medium further lends to the sentience of her works. Rathore’s work has always been in the pursuit of the microscopic form, the world that isn’t available to the naked eye, perhaps through her observations the world she offers to the viewer is just that. The prudent sincerity in her work allows for an engagement that is profound.

Her examination of trees as organic forms allows for anecdotal engagement; in folklore trees have always maintained a mystical persona, the noble guardians of the forests, sometimes long limbed, other times offering wisdom. They are creatures of leisure, not unlike humans, hence their movements and communications are imperceptible to us. It has been proven that trees do in fact communicate through fungal networks. Rathore’s renditions of these living beings is sentient; frothing with life and spirit.

Her work assumes a spiritual quality, it allows the viewer to converse. In the age of social media, where the economics of image allows for superfluous consumption, her work sits in quiet repose, inviting the viewer.. Her strokes, in the technique of miniature almost become the tapestry of a cellular network. Strokes caressing strokes, piled atop one another in graceful harmony as they come together to create form. It appears miniature isn’t just her medium but she embodies the etiquette of it; the sanguine, unpretentious creations. Like a singular gauzy cloud in the winter sky, resolute yet wispy. Rathore’s engagement with the medium is  profound, and allows the viewer to share a moment of mindful introspection.