Narrow Road to the Interior is an eclectic and short group show featuring Rakhi Peswani, Sachin George Sebastian, Shailesh B. R., Bakula Nayak, Pranati Panda, Apnavi Makanji, Gipin Varghese, Gigi Scaria, Susanta Mandal, and Treibor Mawlong, meditating on the line as a shape and symbol in the language of text and art.
Of the poem, poet Henry Taylor says, ‘A poem is an arrangement of lines whose length is determined by some principle other than the width of the page.’ One can say the same thing about the sketch or the painting, indeed any work of art enticed forth from the blank page by the spirit of the line – in handwriting, in etching, in drawing, in brushstrokes.
The line is like a guide, leading us somewhere, everywhere. Serving as the foundational element of any formal analysis of art, it besets the interpretation of meaning by occupying space in time and dispelling the silence of nothingness. It whittles an otherwise infinite perspective, or the possibility of everything, down to the level of the individual subject, or the reality of something.
Like the performer, it is center-stage. Like the companion, it remains close to the eye. Like the road, the line goes on and on.