Kiran Subbaiah

Born 1971, Sidapur, India Lives and works in Bangalore, India Formally trained as a sculptor, Kiran Subbaiah works in a range of media, including assemblage, video and internet art. A common approach of his practice is subverting the form and function of objects, through which he questions the relationship between use and value, highlighting contradictions inherent in everyday life. Irony, deadpan humour and a crude aesthetic provide Subbaiah with simple binaries: functional/defunct, action/reaction and cause/effect to tease out his ideas and observations. Often found-object sculptures are manipulated by Subbaiah into paradoxes. Thirst, 1998, presents a glass tumbler that is anything but refreshing, in that it contains pebbles and is precariously balanced between mouth-drying materials: a mound of salt and a tower of plaster, cloth, tissue paper, expanded polystyrene and cotton wool. Love All, 1999, is a football with a tessellated surface studded by unlit matches positioned for kick-off on a circle of matchbox lighting strips, threatening to ignite the ball should a match commence. In public spaces, Subbaiah uses the language and format of street-signs and official notices. With phrases such as ‘Prohibitions Strictly Forbidden’ and ‘Ignore This Corner’ or symbols such as a bicycle with feet instead of wheels, he challenges the authority of such common directions over the public who are expected to adhere to their rules. The artist becomes actor in his videos, performed in an earnest, deadpan seriousness. Flight Rehearsals, 2003, extends Subbaiah’s interest in subversion beyond objects, to an overturning the conception of gravity and scale. The camera is angled so Subbaiah appears to ‘fly’, having discovered the secret of flight is to repeatedly jump before gravity has time to act. The action moves to a bedroom, where a ringing alarm clock in the “foreground” is actually oversized and distant, creating an unsettling distortion of the sense of space as first perceived. Under the heading of net.art on his website (www.geocities.com/antikiran), Subbaiah presents a number of internet and computer-based projects. These include a series of downloadable mock-viruses that simulate an attack on the computer, complete with shrieks of pain from the machine. Computer viruses interest the artist particularly as something that exists between function and dysfunction - their purpose is to drain the use-value out of a computer. Subbaiah’s website also presents as yet unrealised ideas and propositions, which are themselves social commentaries. These include a toilet roll dispenser that prints sheets with up-to-the-minute news reports, reflecting on the contemporary appetite for uninterrupted access to information and the speed with which news is disposed. He also proposes an amplifier and loud-speaker for bicycle horns, to help cyclists combat the brutal use of vehicular horns in Indian cities. Commenting not only on noisy urban life, but on the tendency to fight fire with fire, rather than more peaceful solutions. The artist considers his work as a form of emancipation, whereby objects no longer need to conform to their original use potential. He sees this extended by defining them art objects – as he states ‘I see the whole advantage of making art in the fact that it need not serve any purpose.’ Rebecca Morrild

Kiran Subbaiah Flight Rehearsals, 2003