Ashish's Photography

Through the Lensed Eye

Solo exhibition of Photographs
By
Ashish Dubey.

Piramal Gallery

Mumbai

What is it in front of our eyes that makes us think or baffled?
Why it demands our attention?
Is it a drawing or painting?
Is it an experiment or an accident?
Is it just a craft?
Is it a trick or a found material?
Then what is it?

It looks like a photograph but to be precise, it is something more than that. Though the artist has seen through the lenses of his eyes or has he planted his eyes in his camera?
He has captured and showed us what we see here.
A journey of a sight of an artist taking a pause so elegant, it is what it is.
It cannot be named because it has to be defined yet, it is new and fresh.
From my point of view it is absolutely contemporary form of art, because it belongs to a time between ancient past to infinite future.
It converses with us in a language we are not yet aware of, but yet provokes us to learn it, because the efforts are so communicative to our visual sense.
We respond to it yet don't understand it because we have forgotten the language of seeing .As a matter of fact, what it communicates is simply visual and expressive.
A type that has not been de-codified yet
In our regular world we have a language; with which we speak, read and write. We have given names and meanings to each and everything but some experiences like this one does not have name and meanings.
Yet they give meaning to our living and that is why we keep looking at them.
Cave-man lived in a dreadful, unsafe, cruel world even though he had a desire to survive.
Realised his vision and expressed it in his cave with a piece of charcoal.
Ashish Dubey has been blessed with a dreamful vision That brought camera into his hands, and thus…..
Both machine and Ashish exchanged with each other what they were missing.
Since the time they were first clicked by curiosity.
Today they know each other through every sense of perception They have been looking through each-other's eyes till they have become one.
Their togetherness is astonishing and it stands for their identity.
It reflects in each work that fastens them in a close relation
The aesthetics of experiencing unnoticed brings all our senses together
That Ashish and his camera have noticed for us with utmost delicacy and care
If you see the combined effect of their creativity you would not know who breaths whom
While Ashish looks at the outside world the camera peeps into his mind.
They both hear the visual echoes, absolutely intense and similar
As if they pick up two ends of the same thread and bring it on the surface
assuring them of their merged co-existence.
Because they don't use each other but explore themselves beautifully in an unselfish innocent manner.
But we who see such works get stunningly surprised and search in it something that exists in our earlier knowing.
And once satisfied with our discovery we give it a name from our existing dictionary, so that we can proudly tell ourselves and others that we understand it.
Can we try to understand it without the sense of misunderstanding?
Or rather we experience it without words, just by seeing?
It is a bit difficult but definitely not impossible because if there is a creator there is an appreciator, as both stem from the same root.
We only have to open our inner eyes and intensely look into it; our vision will guide us only if we believe in it.
There is a known world around us but let us not be blind towards the unknown world within.
Everything that we see has two immovable sides, seen and unseen, tangible and intangible
We have to move from one side to the other one, no matter whichever side we are on.
With such a will for appreciation we have to follow Ashish's works
He is neither afraid of his ignorance nor over confidence of his intellect.
But so humbly and with ease he is spontaneously, exposing his vision for us.
Let us experience it as we experience a newly born baby.
And if needed, take advice from our other senses, eagerly waiting within us to be a part of our appreciation.
Remember such experiences help our life to remain rudimentary and accommodative. That encourages us to accept changes that accomplish us.
Ashish Dubey has given us such an opportunity to enrich our sense of appreciation.
And therefore on behalf of all of you including myself - I congratulate him and thank him for discovering such an art-form and presenting it before us with such visual generosity.

Prabhakar Kolte
Mumbai, 23rd September 2013