ONLY BLUE WILL DO - CONCEPT NOTE
The theme of this year’s annual show came to me just out of the…………..You guessed it. And it felt right immediately. Blue - it's not just a hue: it’s a feeling, a concept. Blue is omnipresent. You see it in the large expanse of the sky, but you cannot touch it. It is the colour of water, but if you cup it in your hands, the colour disappears.
As symbolized by the ungraspable likes of sky and water, the color blue is perceived in terms of its depth, and for this reason has aroused feelings of longing and adoration since ancient times. Shifting our gaze to land, we find blue to be a highly unusual color in nature, lapis lazuli for example being prized in both East and West. And just as film director Derek Jarman once described blue as “darkness made visible”. As we now turn increasingly inward, blue could also be described as the color that most speaks to our souls.
This exhibition presents myriad manifestations of the concept blue by artists of age groups as varied as 4 years to 70 years and encompasses a wide range of genres from painting and sculpture, to craft and performance. Here, blue is captured and interpreted in countless ways by the 150 artists in the show. Blue is in the ocean, on the road, in the wild expanses and gentle corners of our emotions, in the wisdom of our myths, in the magic of Disney animations, or caught within the blue-blood stories of miniature paintings.
At The Art Studio Mumbai, we share the conviction that art has the potential to draw attention while at the same time communicating a message that endures. We acknowledge that recognizing our own role as the source of environmental issues is the first crucial step towards altering our habits. To address the plastic crisis, we have created a typical family that serves as a reflection of this pressing reality, urging us to confront the issue head-on.
Meanwhile, the other installation is a discourse that delves into the intricate relationship between landscape architecture and bird diversity, exploring this connection from the distinct perspective of plastic in domestic use.
In conclusion, I would like to state that the breadth of artistic expression in this show mirrors the remarkable diversity within our students who are teeming with boundless potential.