Elisabetta Marabotto of  Saffronart shares a note on Duplicator’s Dilemma, Atul Dodiya’s solo exhibition in Hong Kong

London: 10 Chancery Lane Gallery in Hong Kong is currently exhibiting Atul Dodiya‘s first solo show in Hong Kong.

The exhibition brings together a selection of works which combine tradition with modern references. On display is a series of works created on shutter doors paying homage to famous international artists such as Roy Lichtenstein.

“The shutter doors bring the commonly seen Bombay shop fronts into the contemporary art genre. Dodiya uses the duplicity of imagery to play with wild contrasts of scenery. This series combines the metal fronts of the pop art work of Lichtenstein with the deeply expressionistic long and stringy figures of his paintings. A man whose bones can be seen through his skin reads a book, a skull lays by his side. When the door is closed, piercing cartoon like eyes peer with the phrase, “What? Why did you ask that? What do you know about my image duplicator?” Highly original, his works physically add layers of meaning to his works. They can be read half-closed or open as well as fully seeing one image or the other.”

This series was inspired by the sight of small business in Mumbai locked down because of the fear of violence and religious persecution following the bombings in 1993.

Also in the exhibition is a series of black and white drawings representing figures almost floating in a phantasmal and fuzzy reality which subtly engage the audience in a curious dialogue.

Dodiya said about his works: “What is better? The fish inside the water, or the fish outside the water? The mirror reflects reality. Is that reflection real? Is the image which an artist depicts on canvas more real than the image which the viewer sees in reality?

Probably, these are some of the philosophical questions, which arose in the process while looking at Lichtenstein’s ‘Mirror’. Inside-outside, above-below, real-unreal, hidden-revealed, single-double, are these opposites? This is the dilemma with which artists begin and arrive at the discovery of the relativity of the real.

The fine line between art and life gets blurred, to the point where art is overpowering the reality of life. It becomes a game of stepping in and stepping out of the creative space.”

The exhibition is on until January 30, for more information click here.