Sohan Jakhar

My recent works addresses my relationship with the cities as well as my ancestry. The current body of work examines the visual dynamics of the roadside bazaar. Our street Bazaar is surrounded by visual stimulation, noisy visual chaos of vendors, hawkers. These vendors, hawkers dominate busiest urban landscapes. Here, a whole new world of images, sounds and gestures is evolving and gaining ground. Visuals of roadside stalls anticipate and announce the cultural and technological shifts.

These street vendors offer a critical viewing of the strategic role of popular Indian imagery from the bazaar "not as an object to be seen or a text to be read, but as a process wherein social and subjective identities are formed. Bringing in of a new trajectory, while retaining its cultural traditions. The Indian cultural sphere seems to engage in a languid debate between conservative and the liberal, the revivalist and the progressive, the socialist and the consumerist, the indigenous and the international. The multiplicity and disjuncture, which exist in our country, empowers me. Where the ancient and cyber- space coexist.

These roadside stalls dramatise changing personal and social values alongside forging ideological conceptions of the nation itself. . The visuals of these stalls grew out of major cultural and technological transformations that occurred in the last decade, which included the impact of the consumerism.

I draw mainly from these bazaars streets. The incorporated images are the photographs, later digitally modified and painted on the canvas. The treatment of pictures has a simplistic approach. I have uses layers of vibrant colors that simply have strong individual personas expressing a subtle theatre of visual form. The decorative motifs floating in the background come from the painted fresco on the Havelis (Mansions) of Shekhavati, in my native. Juxtaposed them on visuals of these bazaars, seem to reflect a scenario in permanent state of transition and moving life. My works aesthetic delineates the complex inter –relations of India’s urban & semi urban scenario.

The anonymous lives of street vendors and their carts are mobilized with uncanny visual effects by Sohan Jakhar’s series ‘Vendorism.’ As the coined term suggests, Jakhar views these omnipresent stalls with the eye of an intellectual (the ‘ism’) observer from afar; this is reflected in the angles of the subjects in the foreground and the uncanny sense of the viewer lurking just outside the canvas’ frame. Jakhar takes photographs of vendors then Photoshops them against the colorful backgrounds of wallpapers from his own Haveli in his hometown, Shekhawati. He then increases the noise in the image until the photograph blurs: the residue produces a scene that is seemingly timeless-- the harsh reality of a day to day sale of perishable items softened round the edges, silenced, anonymous.

Jakhar deploys a method previously used only in film: rotoscoping live-action and compositing it over a matte. By employing such techniques in his process and traditional life as his content, Jakhar implies the paradox of timelessness and technology that is so frequently seen in India today. Though Jakhar’s background is local and unique to his own history, the patterns seem to appear out of the 1960’s hippie movement; its flowers symbolizing constant flux, hope and peace, romancing the otherwise harsh reality of the darkened faces of street vendors. The stands seem to be floating on the background, disembodied and de-contextualized in their dream-like state. However, this method of semi-abstraction does not compromise real detail; in fact, it paradoxically enhances it. We search for the corner screws of the cart or the spokes in its wheel to find ground when the stalls themselves have no concrete to rest upon.

The juxtaposition of the light pastel colors of the background and the deep, dark outlines of the vendors reflects, formally, both the facelessness as well as the depth that characterizes these stalls of everyday. Jokhar’s work contains, though more mildly, some of Suleman’s humor: he captures stalls such as ‘On-Line’ Halwai (sweet-maker) that have nothing to do with the internet, instead the phrase is something the vendor may have heard repeatedly, and chosen as an enticing one for the literate world. Though the vendors appear nameless, each of them has their own personality, be in a mustache or the hand with which he chooses to serve a customer. Through abstracted concealment, this series of ten 60” by 60” acrylics manages to reveal a deeper, bolder depiction of the man who sits waiting patiently in a box, just around the corner.

Himali Singh Soin, Art Slant. ind/articles/show/11164

SOLO SHOWS

2010 “Urban Ethos” HKFINEART, HongKong
2009 “Venodrism” Arushi Arts, New Delhi
2009 “Venodrism” Musuem Gallery, Mumbai
2005 The Jam Jar, Dubai
2005 Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur

GROUP SHOWS

2010 “Muzik.Enchanted.Life.” Gallerie Angel Arts, JW Marriott, Mumbai
2010 “The Art of Democracy” The Bristol Gallery, Bristol
2009 “Who We Are” Sunjin Galleries, Singapore
2009 "Resonance" Galerie Caroline Vachet, Lyon, France
2009 Summer Show, Arushi Arts, New Delhi
2008 “INDIART Part II” Group Show at Paris
2008 “Portrait of a Place” Group Show at Rob Dean Art Ltd, London
2008 Group Show at Asia House, London by Quartet Art, London
2008 "Indian Escapades" Sunjin Art Gallery, Singapore
2008 Suchitrra Art Gallery, Mumbai
2006 Sunjin Art Gallery, Singapore
2006 “Index” Vision Arts, Mumbai
2003 "Hritusanhar" Rajasthan School of Art Jaipur
2002 Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi
2001 Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi
2000 Sudarshana Art gallery, Bikaner
2000 Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur
1999 Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur

AUCTIONS

2009 Modern and Contemporary Asian Art, 33 Auction, Singapore
2009 Sotheby’s, Indian & Southeast Asian Art, New York

ONLINE SHOWS

2011 “Pop People” Breathe Arts, Mumbai
2008 Artist of the Month, Indian Art Collectors
2008 Indian Art Collectors 3rd Anniversary Show
2007 Artist of the Month, Visions Art Gallery, Mumbai

WORKSHOPS and ARTIST CAMPS

2010 “INTER REGIONAL WORKSHOP” RLKK, Lucknow
2009 National Young Artist Camp, Neerja Modi School, Jaipur
2003 PAG, Young Print maker's camp of Rajasthan, Jaipur
2003 AIFCS, All India artist camp, Jaipur


PARITICIPATIONS

2010 “Open your eyes, look up the blue sky” 3rd ASYAAF, Korea
2010 “Our Own Path” Harvest, Arushi Arts Annual show, New Delhi
2009 “Ctrl+Alt+Del” “Harvest, Arushi Arts Annual show at Stainless Gallery, New Delhi
2009 “Roopam” Rajasthan School of Art Alumni Show, JKK, Jaipur
2008 “Harvest” Arushi Arts Annual show at Stainless Gallery, New Delhi
2008 “Varnika” Rajasthan School of Art Alumni Show, JKK, Jaipur
2006 49th National Exhibition of Art, Bhopal by L.K.A. New Delhi
1998 Annual student exhibition of R.L.K.A.Jaipur
1998 2nd Bank of Punjab art exhibition, Chandigarh
1999-2004 Art Fair - Rajasthan State Academy of Fine Art, Jaipur