It is safe to say that if art of any kind were created with a commercial view, the end result would be affected at some level, meaning that the artist’s attempt at expression would be affected as he/she would, perhaps subconsciously feel the need to change the idea to accommodate the view of a buyer.
Occasionally however, you will come across artists whose work is created solely with an idea to provoke thought. Sudath Abeysekera is one such artist and his latest exhibit titled ‘Media Stress’ is created purely to make people do just that.
His last two exhibitions, the first titled “David, Lotus and Butterfly” and the second titled “Media Barbecue” highlighted how youth were affected in the current political background and the pollution of mass thought through the media respectively.
Sudath believes stress has entered people’s lives in a different way during the post war period. He feels that the media affected by politics, not yet realizing their responsibilities, have begun to disfigure history.
This idea is expressed in his current exhibition through various mixed media, even crumpled up pieces of paper. The Art Way gallery where the exhibit is being held is now seemingly one big work of art that is connected through different pieces.
Even the pond outside the gallery is full of blood red water with a figure of a man diving into it. Walk into the gallery and the man diving into the blood is the end of a piece that begins two rooms away, starting from a bathroom with a TV attached to a toilet bowl with roots made out of newspapers going through the wall into the next room.
Then there’s the podium with a scissor, knife, a broken bottle and another knife instead of microphones, the stands showing fictional logos of media institutions.
Sudath explains that in a society where the media is warped and so too the facts that people receive, art can play a major role in prompting people to begin a discourse of critical thought.
Sudath Abeysekera’s Media Stress Exhibition will continue till May 2 at the Art Way Gallery, No.66, Old Kesbewa Road, Nugegoda. |
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