Grand Hyatt Mumbai 2 Artwork 1
The hotel was full of expensive artwork. There was so much that I had to devote two pages to it.
"Bollywood: City of Dreams," by Riyas Komu.
Komu's composition in collaboration with the Kerala wood-carver Raju is a
delightfully profane, not-quite mirror image to the sacred domain of the
rock-cut temple and the cave hermitage, around the theme of Bollywood: Mumbai's
vast film industry. Bollywood embodies the image of a metropolis where dreams
are fulfilled and magic is the dominant reality. Raju has carved in mahogany the
12-foot-long image of a reclining actress Woman as Bollywood's most addictive
image; the dismembered hand and leg emerge from beyond the screen, as though
trying to make contact with an imagined body. Indicating the more sordid aspect
of fantasy met with frustration in the city, Komu also connects black flues,
emblematic of industry, emanating from the dream-body. Komu also presents the
"first day, first show" patrons who throng the cinema halls in India's small
towns, repeating their images in a sequence.
"Cave Sentinels," by Rajeev Sethi
Conceived as collapsible lamps in the workshops of the art connoisseur Anand
Sarabhai, these light pillars, crafted from handmade paper by a group of artists
from Indore and illuminated from within, bring to mind the looming rock-hewn
profiles of the massive yet lyrical cushion-capital columns favored by the
Kalachuri dynastic patrons of Gharapuri, as the Elephanta Island sanctuary was
known in the 6th century A.D. These columns, two translucent and two opaque,
capture the eternal in ephemeral gestures. Although expressive in a contemporary
sense, they return us to a time nearly two millennia ago when today's Mumbai
region was a nodal point for the Indian Ocean trade that connected West Asia to
peninsular India and Southeast Asia.
This style of artwork was on display near the front door.
Moonphase, by Jyoti Kolte
The universal generative principles of Shiva and Shakti, male and female, appear
as the complementary phenomena of darkness and light in Jyoti Kolti's
installation. Shaped from metal and treated with resin, the two discs held in
communion are colored a deep nocturnal blue and perforated to allow pinpoints of
light to show through from the incandescent bulb behind each disc. The
impression that the viewer carries away is that of stellar illuminations
punctuating the night sky. The viewing eye is transported into an exploration of
various forms of counterpoint in the subtle composition of forces, each modeled
on the complementarity between the lingam and the yoni, which
manifest themselves as light-shaft and disc-base, and as demarcated form and
diffuse halo of light. When lit from within and above, the discs cast shadows
resembling a figure 8, the ancient symbol of infinity.