A liar searching for the truth -
Interview by Moushumi Kandali

One sees a streak of “Baul” like mystical bearing when an artist declares that he is a liar searching for the truth. Be it the Baul like mystique of mind or Buddhist monk like incantation of certain typological series with some recurrent metaphors and signifiers evolving into a conceptual language of art, sculptor-painter Ganesh Gohain’s discourse seems to be philosophically contemplative. With professional training in centers like Fine arts faculty of MSU, Baroda, Glasgow school of art, or Berllandery sculpture workshop, Wales, UK, Ecole Superieure Des Beaux Arts, Le Mans, France and the initial study in the college of Arts and Crafts, Guwahati, Assam; the artist who emerged in the Indian art scène during the mid nineties, has been fervently mastering the fine skills of the sculptural hands. What are the things and thoughts these sculptural hands have attempted to capture so far? How and why and how far? Through a brief dialogue, we tried to frame a reasonably life-like sketch of Ganesh Gohain’s artistic endeavor, if not a complete portraiture.

MOUSHUMI KANDALI: Whenever we see your works we see in them a triadic relation of the spiritual, cultural and the personal. The interplay of physical/metaphysical, real/surreal in your renderings speaks about a covert transcendentalist in you. What do you have to say in this regard?
GANESH GOHAIN: Visual expression depends on visual experience. It is an individual experience. More than spiritual, it is personal. No one visually experiences the same. The thread of these experiences is grounded in one's own origin, the root, where one belongs; the surroundings with which one interacts. Physical/metaphysical, real/surreal- all these binaries are almost embedded in our bones. Hence it is metaphysical, transcendental. It is the interplay. The very act of work itself is a spiritual experience. It also depends on one's insight. When I say "I Exist"- everything else is interrelated to the very fact of my being. In a way, I do not have direct answers for these questions. Titles of my works are actually questions, not answers; questions to myself. They are the abstracts of a 'thought', not a direct link to the work. “Letter to My Father',' Towards The Sky', "The Road Which I Passed Through" etc. are questions. In fact, title plays an independent pivotal role in my work. Mostly image comes first not the title.
In another title, "The Book on Ladakh" the result of the thought is physical, but the thought itself is metaphysical. I believe, the visual is realistic, but the vision is metaphysical / abstract. Thought is the main key here. The environment which the work creates is important. A particular moment created on a particular environment. How to bring Ladakh into this environment is the task. Art always not necessarily speaks by itself. At times it demands a clue. The transcendental comes from these experiences. Like the notion of birth is in itself is metaphysical. The work on Ladakh, as a result - is physical, the thought behind is very much metaphysical. The word 'Real' has multiple meanings. Everything is there, as I 'I exist'; everything revolves around the 'thought’. The search for the meaning is the metaphysical. The moment you start looking for the meaning it becomes transcendental.

MK: Certain recurrent motifs – a foot, eggs, trees in their web-like formations, a solemn meditative face, door frames, chair, etc – springing up as some personal iconography gathered in the process of the lived-experiences can be seen in your artistic oeuvre. At times we see the re-location and re-collection of your past/previous works as in The Table or Letter to Father. Why? Is Memory or an urge for a thread of continuity the vital force of your creative drive?
GG: I believe in language. I do not intend to emphasize on the motifs or the icons exactly. Rather it flows spontaneously. These icons, motifs, are all around, within the spectrum of our own religio-cultural practices. In my work they do not stand only for the representative purpose. It is again more about the experience of experiencing, not to specify any meaning attached to it. It is more of gathered personal experience.
When my father died, I was not around. I could not touch him for the last time. When I returned, there was a void in place of him. That realization of the void created by the absence of him remained within, which appeared on different occasions, different ways later. This sense of void also created a kind of illusion developing towards certain images. I am a visual intellect. Everything is visually oriented; the visual comes first then the aesthetic. Though, 'The chair' is a metaphor; it is not merely a metaphorical exploration to me. They are intermingled, the meaning and the metaphor. Perhaps we can see something similar in Brancusi, the father of modern sculpture. Who simplified the images almost similarly as in the Hindu iconographic representation of the Shiva Linga. He had experience it in the way which could be transmitted to others. So, I did this work as a tribute to Brancusi “A Book on Brancusi”. The abstract is more important in total, to experience this shared experiences.

MK: Ok, then tell us something more about your tribute to Brancusi. Why do you feel this special connection with him?
GG: I think Brancusi is the father of Contemporary Art, not only of Sculpture. The shift was the turning point, which Brancusi had brought in. People critiqued him as a designer at times. But it cannot be restricted within these limited peripheries.
I have observed the minimalistic tendencies in our own cultural/traditional expressions. I do not want to be Brancusi of India, but he is important. The thread that unites me to him is important. History never leaves us, no matter it is old or recent. Without the quest "why", one cannot sustain. That does not imply you keep asking why all the time! It is more within you, the query should remain.
Many people say, keep the eight doors open, who has seen that eight door? May be we have more than the eight doors, thousands and thousands of them.

MK: Multiple realities, multiple possibilities...right…well, your works like “The seed becomes Mountain” also contemplates on the duel-identity of any being or object. What drives you to explore this inherent duality in nature?
GG: The space of my works is nature. May be the duality you mentioned could be explained through another title:"We Will Never Be there....The Pedestal of Air" which focuses on the aspect of Being/ Non Being. My practice is not result oriented; it is the process through which one can put forward the questions. They are not the mathematical hypotheses. It is the process of realization of the work, through the work. The act of making itself; the time and space it attempts to recreate. Everything behind the title is incidental.
The fact that “The seed becomes mountain” is realized only after I had gone through the experience of it. The void within the mould created the mystery here. While separating the two parts of the mould to unveiled the original cast, I realized suddenly that the mould is actually unveiling more. It opened up the both: the clear and the unclear.
Void itself is mysterious. The mystery should remain as mystery.
The visual memory reacts, it is a physical experience. Work is a relatively satisfied process, not fully satisfactory. The moment it satisfies you, it will stop. I am in the process, have not found the answers yet. There is no definite answer or end to anything. It is a constant attempt to reach out to the new set of questions. The urge for this should remain, otherwise with Einstein's invention on relativity it should have stopped there. Till the mystery is not created- a work is not complete. When the mould is separated, the emptiness created the visual magic. Clarity is attained through the ambiguity of it.

MK: From Homer to Ulysses, Sartre to Tarkovsky, the concept of “Home” as a phenomenological, intra psychic, multi dimensional experience has been a much speculated subject. In some of your work such as “In my bag”, we see a similar kind of speculation. How do you conceptualize it? Is “Home” the mirror of your “Self”?
GG: May be, yes! In the more recent version of 'In My Bag', it could be a reflection of the self.
House, here, does not stand literally. They are more like words floating around. In a way home is a non existential term for me. It is again a mystery. "Thoughts" could be home, which changes its shades, time to time. It is a vision, which has various links, to the origin, the native etc. Like mirror it reflects the opposite reality. Though it seems, it is not the actual reality. Rather more abstract than a representational reality. Mirror of the self is an abstract term. In the sense it is the reflection of the self, which is not crystal clear. Mirror --that reflects an unclear reality.
I am a landscapist. It is difficult for me to go with the phrase “Home is the mirror of the self", instead, it is “The Portrait of the self". My inclination towards this form/structure could also be linked to the occupational background of many of my immediate family members, who belonged mostly to the engineering field. This is how I see the link between the recurring architectural elements in my work.

MK: You seem to adhere to the notion of “Material-as-Metaphor” or this belief that sculptural material has/ ought to have a metaphysical meaning of its own. You call your stone the painted polyester resin. How do you explore the possibilities of a material?
GG: Yes, material speaks.
Material is chosen, what the image demands. That is how I visualize the vision. Vision is the perspective of the image. Here treatment is important. It has an aesthetic value. Experience produces meaning.
Sometimes material is metaphorical. Bronze - as the word suggests - has solidity, the visible mass, or the heaviness are its characters. While casting a bronze sculpture this solidity has to go through the process of melting, losing its characteristics to take a new shape.
In the work “Foot from Vadodara”, resin is only a medium, not material .It is used to create the feelings of a stone, hence it is a synthetic stone. To create a meaningful image is important, that is the demand of the work.

MK: “Foot from Vadodara”, “ Letter to Vadodara”, “ Torso from Vadodara “-- with so many sculptural “Odes” to Vadodara, this adopted “ Home” of yours springs up almost like a metaphor. What does this metaphor mean to you?
GG: As I said earlier, mystery unveiled retains its charm. Yet I have something more to say here.
You can say it is a tribute to Baroda, it is my adopted home. More than home indeed! This is my Gurukul. Somewhere I mentioned earlier that if my birth place Axom is Devki, then Vadodara is Mother Yashoda to me. This is where I live and work. I am emotionally attached to it. These are also relative terms, home, adopted home etc. If we go back to the title "We Will Never Be There; The pedestal of Air", in the similar term, you are attached at the same time detached to it. Like Bhagvad Geeta says, Work is the main thing above everything.

MK: It would perhaps be not impertinent now to map your artistic transition say from the “Nine Pots”, “White Coffee blue pillows” to “Letters to Father" or the “The road that I passed through”. You seem to be lingually inclined to a minimalist/ conceptual/ abstractionist mode of expression. Is this entire process a metamorphosis or a continuum of continuity?
GG: Our thought changes time to time. Belief transforms. I am not a saint yet, but aspiring to be one. In the beginning I never termed my work as minimalist. It is not always true. To become a saint one has to learn to discard everything. Time is important in terms of existence. Modernist minimalist had a behavioral tendency to negate, somehow. In my case I would like to portray more of the positive. You might find some negative elements in it; my prime attempt is for the opposite.
Metamorphosis is more appropriate term. Continuum of Continuity? Yes, but not in terms of repetition. Nothing can be repeated, can we? When we chant the word Hari or Ram or anything like that, after a point it does not remain the same. The vibration of it changes. With repetition things transforms.
If you see the past, the history, things repeat and thus, transforms. In the contemporary context, Museum is the Temple. That is how, my works too are transforming, towards the wider periphery of this notion of the: "Temple of the future".

MK: Can you just elaborate on this notion-- Museum is the temple . Do you see Museum as the “Temple of the future?”
GG: My art is a visual study of the past to present and present to future. I can visualize a connectivity from primitive/prehistoric to Renaissance to Contemporary and may be to the future and see the Museum as the sacred site where art in such connectivity can be witnessed. Hence it becomes a temple, a place for meditation and the future temple.

MK: I would like to ask you one vital question here in this connection. I see an inherent link between the various simplistic/ minimalist/ abstractionist kind of traditional sculptures, the iconographies, the simple, un ornate architecture, or various cultural forms of your native place Assam and your gamut of lingual expression. The central place of worship in the inner precinct of the Kamakhya temple where we find no idol but a dark sacred pool of water called the Yoni of the Goddess or the Shiva Linga of the Shivdoul of Shivsagar are for me some of the finest examples of such abstractionist imagination. Have you at any point of your life been inspired by such religio-cultural representations of your native place?
GG: Yes always. It is within me. I grew up with those inherited perceptions. One always collects, like the bees collect its honey. It is always additions never subtractions.
I am now coming back to the "Temple of the Future", which I envisage as a book. May be not exactly a book- an encyclopedic expression! The book without an end.
In Sibsagar, Axom, The Shiva Linga of Siva Doul has an interesting representation, which is unlike other Indian expression of it, it is concave. In my earlier practices I intentionally used such direct imageries to create the similar environment.
The concept God is a mysterious feeling, Sometimes my works are big, much bigger than it appears. As in “Gift” it breaks the boundaries. Like in the myth of Sati, different body parts are scattered all over and each became a holy place in India, Kamakhya being one of those places. It is an engulfing process, which accommodates everything. The inherited perception as well as the experiencing one, moves parallel. It is not of borrowing but accommodating of the whole.
I am a liar, searching for the truth...