A Second Coming

A man spitting on another man taking a selfie; a skeleton playing the drums seemingly announcing the arrival of a very vibrant apocalypse; a trail of cash flying out of an open suitcase while the well-dressed owner of the hand attached to it makes a run for it. In spite of years of living in Delhi, French-born Julien Segard seems to have retained his sense of humour in the perception of his milieu. Underbellies of flyovers, Cubist animals made of found objects, a confrontation with chairs, and if you’re lucky, a conversation with the artist, are some of the things you are in for at the current exhibition titled A SECOND COMING at the Experimenter Gallery, Ballygunge (Kolkata).

Segard dives head first into his surroundings, which is his prime source of artistic inspiration, forming a narrative of his experiences with - and the relationship between - man, nature, and architecture. His sensibility inevitably lures him towards the latent romanticism lurking in and around industrial wastelands, abandoned parking lots, flyovers, and rooftops. His oeuvre appears to be a gentle tap on the shoulder, asking you to momentarily turn your gaze towards these decadent, forgotten corners while the city looks the other way.

In a drawing of a flyover titled NAJAFGRAH, he chooses a point of view where close-up and wide-angle, detail and totality, all seem to enter into one large, dynamic relationship. The work nearly takes up a full wall and comprises of multiple surfaces like metal, cardboard, and ply which have been assembled together to build a larger whole. Contrarily, in the series of smaller charcoal drawings in the adjoining section, fragments of a flyover are removed from the whole and made to occupy the entire frame where the subject shifts from the known and enters the realm of abstraction.

In another room, a generous cluster of untitled watercolours of chairs evokes Company School paintings - in the manner in which the subject is isolated within the frame and the exoticised street-side dwellers in their colourful attires have been replaced with something new, something fresh, something that is not otherwise present in the album of every white man passing through India - chairs. At least the chair cannot talk back in a language that the artist admittedly has still not picked up.

Segard seems to have a low tolerance for wastage which is apparent in his penchant for scraps and salvaged materials as well as his unsparing use of every possible surface in the gallery - wall, ceiling, and floor. The latter is strewn with sculptures in each room with titles like ONE STONE, TWO HOUSES, THREE RUINS, and FOUR GRAVE DIGGERS. Made of bones, ceramic pieces, gardening tools and more, some resemble terrestrial mammals while others assume abstract forms.

The variety in the aesthetics of the exhibition almost triggers the feeling of standing in front of an aisle at the supermarket. However, upon careful scrutiny, a familiar echo of certain elements and forms can be traced throughout the five sections of the exhibition. The curious objects suspended from the ceiling in METEOR look like they have been plucked out of the two large canvases titled HEPTANE and HEXANE on the facing wall. A small geometrical sculpture made of wood and debris of white cement gets an upgrade in a larger version rendered in metal in the next room. A miniature wooden chair sits askew on a shelf adjacent to the watercolours of the same subject. These echoes are like playful clues that don’t particularly lead to a destination, and yet leave you feeling like you have enjoyed the journey.

"I like the idea of the in-between" says the artist. Somewhere amidst life in France and India, certainties and paradoxes, the potholes and the stars, Segard has become a secure tenant in the land of the "in-between". It is in this microcosmic territory that his perspective and practice truly come alive.

The exhibition is on view till 25th July, 2019.