Vikram Divecha_Towards Opacity _Jan 2020

Towards Opacity

−

Vikram Divecha

14 January - 14 March 2020

−



Fugitivity as Form It takes approximately ten minutes for the
photoreceptive cone cells in the eye to adapt
by David Markus to the dark. This is roughly the running time
of the looping audio narration in Gallery 354
Cover: (2019), the immersive installation that sets
Gallery 354, 2019 up the central premise to Vikram Divecha’s
Looped voice recording 10 minutes 28 seconds, spent solo-exhibition, Towards Opacity. We enter
light bulbs from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, discarded a small photography darkroom, barely lit by
cardboard box, darkroom safelight, 4”x5” direct positive a red safelight. Guided by Divecha’s voice,
paper, developing trays with photography chemistry we partake of an aesthetic experience that
solutions and safelight holder, water, folding table, studio unfolds at the creeping pace of what is known
monitor, media player, partition wall fittings, wall paint, in ocular biology as “dark adaptation.” As our
blackout fabric, carpet, printed cards, wooden shelf pupils adjust we are made cognizant of the
Left: ways in which vision is inherent to subjectivity.
Floor Plan, Gallery 354, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018 Simultaneously, the voice on the audio track
Ink on canson paper ushers us metaphorically into Gallery 354: an
13.9 x 21.6 cm exhibition hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
that houses numerous objects from Melanesia.
One particularity of Gallery 354 is its subdued
lighting, which one encounters after walking
through the brightly lit Greek and Roman wing.
It was this shift in lighting, observed by Divecha
during his repeated visits to the museum, that
triggered the excavation of vision and darkness
that is central to this new body of work.
Throughout Towards Opacity, Divecha engages
with two distinct apparatuses of display and
capture, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and his
iPhone SE, in order to explore notions of failure,
fugitivity, and opacity.
Perhaps the most evident marker of failure in
Gallery 354 is the blank piece of direct positive
photo paper lying in the tray of development
fluid toward the rear of the darkroom. On one of
Divecha’s trips to the Met, he had intended to
photograph some of the Melanesian ancestral
objects on view, but all that was captured was
blank images. The work we have entered is a
memorial to this act of failed exposure. And yet,
precisely because no image has developed, we
are led to surmise that the photo paper bears
the trace of a charged encounter. In its evasion
of the predatory apparatus of capture, the
undocumented artwork, already opaque to the
museumgoer, eluding apprehension, becomes
a literal specter or spirit, a “fugitive object,”
radiating agency even as it recedes into the dim
light.1 Gallery 354, then, is an art of failure in the

"The voice on the audio track ushers us metaphorically into
Gallery 354: an exhibition hall at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art that houses numerous objects from Melanesia."

precise sense, since according to dominant from the wood shop at Columbia University
culture, “losers leave no records,” whereas to to piece together The relationship between
create a record of failure is to affirm the more wood and sunlight (2018). This work was
peculiar facets of unbecoming and illegibility conceived as a model—or a three-dimensional
in one’s encounter with the world.2 Otherwise sketch from memory—of the objects in Gallery
stated, it is to move towards opacity, as an 354. The fact that it is assembled from the
alternative to what Édouard Glissant describes discarded remainders of other artists’ labor
as a violently grasping comprehension—the suggests a degree of authorial relinquishment.
will to a transparent understanding of the other By seeking out discarded pieces of wood
that has defined the dominant discourses that often only vaguely resemble his already
of western photography, anthropology, and imperfect mental images of the objects
museology.3 in the museum, Divecha honors the initial
Whereas visual representation fails, in Gallery opacity of those displayed objects. The work
354, the recorded voice—once described by also highlights the apparatus of museum
the nineteenth-century German poet Ernst von architecture, with its complicity in what Clifford
Wildenbruch as “the true photograph of the James identifies as the “powerful and rule
soul”—opens a crucial portal. “The sound of governed” systems of institutional meaning.8
the voice can never lie,” writes Wildenbruch, The Brancusi-like wood scraps anticipate the
“thus it seems to me the phonograph is the modern wing that runs adjacent to Gallery
soul’s own true photograph.”4 Of course a 354. At the same time, the single light source
truthful photograph is by no means a more calls to mind the direct sunlight from which the
transparent one. Although the audio track in Melanesian objects at the Met are protected
Gallery 354 is unmistakably confessional in thanks to the massive shades installed on
tone, the words it conveys, as much as the the museum’s southwest facing windows. By
objects and exhibition it darkly illuminates, are directly exposing his own wooden objects to
a meditation on non-identity. Divecha speaks light, Divecha casts an ironic glance at the
precisely in order to tell us of a voice that is human propensity for preservation—the mad
other than his own and that reverberates in struggle against the elements, that depends
an uncharted region of his psyche.5 If we are upon the foreclosure of inevitabilities.
listening, it is the “je est un autre” (I is another) The apparatus of preservation is similarly
of Rimbaud that we hear, the same affirmation highlighted in the series of photographs,
of self-difference that Glissant invokes when Southwest window facade (Cropped view),
he affirms opacity as a common denominator Gallery 354, Metropolitan Museum of Art
in the errant and unfinished work of Relation.6 (2018), which nod to an early negative by
Contravening the museum’s ordained modes William Henry Fox Talbot [The Oriel Window,
of spectatorship and comprehension, Divecha South Gallery, Lacock Abbey], probably
encounters these museum objects as an 1835. Divecha’s images are both literally
opaque echo of what was always, already and metaphorically a photograph of the
within himself. In Glissant’s terms, he consents museological apparatus “at work”—or, rather,
to the “accumulation of sediments” that failing to work, since the peeling and corroded
make up the multiplicity of his being within a UV-blocking window film depicted in the
global-historical reality that has always been prints confirms that the museum’s efforts at
more interwoven in its open totality than the preserving its collection of Oceanic objects had
imperialist enterprise could allow itself to long ago begun to falter.
believe.7 In his series of color block paintings titled Lazy
In a continuing gesture of embracing multiple Loading (2019), Divecha shifts his focus from
voices in his work, Divecha collected scraps the museum to the handheld apparatuses that

"In the final works, each block of pigment represents a more
discrete image held in a state of non-arrival."

William Henry Fox Talbot (British, Dorset 1800–1877 Lacock), [The Oriel Window, South Gallery, Lacock Abbey], Probably 1835, Paper
negative, 8.5 × 11.6 cm, irregularly trimmed, Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art

have transformed everyday experience into one be thought of as a metaphor for the movement
perpetually infiltrated by a smaller scale but between transparency and opacity. In the final
no less captivating spectacle of display. Lazy works, each block of pigment represents a
loading is a programming feature that defers more discrete image held in a state of non-
the loading of information until it is needed. It arrival. Exhibited in a formation that conjures
is noticeable when scrolling quickly through a the vertical scroll of social media, these
search on Google Images. For a fraction of a works hold the mirror up to the black mirror
second, monochrome color blocks appear on of the attention economy. In response to the
the screen in the place of the images that are hyper-efficiency of the computer age and the
loading. Divecha screen-captured this fugitive, schizophrenic spectacle of the mobile screen,
interstitial moment by using a weak internet Divecha embraces interminable delay. Bringing
signal, which slows down the loading process. vision back into focus, the enlarged paintings
He then visited the studios of various painters pronounce color relationships, but in the
in New York to study and discuss at length the opaque walls of colour Divecha seems also to
colors displayed in these screenshots, learning be smearing out any notion of representation.
individual color mixing approaches. Returning At the origin and endpoint of this body of work
to his studio, he patiently mixed pigments to is the desire for a more complete exposure:
color-match the monochrome blocks on the the opening and closing of the museum blinds
digital screen.9 The combined effort constitutes in Gallery 354 described on what Divecha
a poetics of deceleration, as well as another art refers to as a “rumor card.” Yet this work, too,
of failure, since, for all his painstaking efforts, may prove to be one that is defined by infinite
the work of color-matching is always imperfect. postponement or outright failure. Like Talbot’s
Indeed, the process of transforming light on a negative image, which the audio narration in
screen into pigment on a canvas might even

Gallery 354, 2019, visitor

Gallery 354 notes is kept safe somewhere in 1 Vilém Flusser linkens the “photographic apparatus” to an animal
the bowels of the Met, the institution may well
deem its holdings too precious to see the light that “lies in wait…sharpen[ing] its teeth in readiness.” Vilém Flusser,
of day.
In the meantime we are left with the shadow Towards a Philosophy of Photography, trans. Anthony Mathews
play of the museological apparatus, which
is documented in the photogravure diptych, (London: Reaktion Books, 2000), 21.
Shadow over granite floor, Ancestor Figure 2 Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure (Durham: Duke
(1979.206.1561), Gallery 354, Metropolitan
Museum of Art (2018). The work depicts a University Press, 2011), 88. Referencing Scott Sandage’s Born
figure that is said to have come to life to fight
invaders. Here, Divecha once again gestures Losers: A History of Failure in America, Halberstam notes that
toward the elusive nature of these spirit objects
with the washed out ghost print, created from narratives of failure “can be told in a number of different ways.”
running the original plate through the press a
second time without re-inking. The seemingly While Divecha’s practice isn’t the work of “anticapitalist queer
faded appearance of this second print also
returns us to the inevitable failures that struggle” that The Queer Art of Failure elucidates, it intersects
accompany the processes of production and
preservation. As the image of a shadow less with a number of Halberstam’s concerns in the way in which
comprehensible in its form but no less charged
with life than any figure that might have cast it, it approaches representation and relational experience (ibid.).
the work serves as a succinct visual argument 3 Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy Wing (Ann
for opacity. Like each of the works in this
exhibition it suggests a rethought relation to Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 26.
the apparatuses of capture and display, and 4 Quoted in Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, trans.
a turn toward the shadowy regions in which
fugitivity becomes form and the self becomes Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz (Stanford: Stanford
another.
University Press, 1999), 79.
5 On the Gallery 354 (2019) audio track, Divecha remarks: “These

objects speak to me of another space, another period, possibly

located within myself.”
6 Reflecting on the emergence of globalized existence, Glissant

writes, “We ‘know’ that the Other is within us and affects

how we evolve as well as the bulk of our conceptions and the

development of our sensibility. Rimbaud’s ‘I is an other’ is literal

in terms of history. In spite of ourselves, a sort of ‘consciousness

of consciousness’ opens us up and turns each of us into a

disconcerted actor in the poetics of Relation.” Édouard Glissant,

Poetics of Relation, 27.
7 Ibid., 33.
8 Clifford James, “On Collecting Art and Culture,” Out There:

Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, ed. Russel Ferguson,

et al. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990), 143.
9. The painters Divecha consulted include: Annette Hur, Susanna

Koetter, Rachel LaBine, Esteban Jefferson, Stipan Tadic, Patrick

Bayle, Henry Anker, Yifan Jiang and Tomas Vu-Daniel.



Printed card about Divecha's light Right:
intervention proposal to the MET (Part of Towards Opacity, 2020
the installation Gallery 354)
Show view



The relationship between wood and sunlight, 2018
Scrap pieces from Columbia University woodshop, white
marker, laminated plywood, metal frame, Ikea floor lamp
Variable dimensions



Towards Opacity, 2020
Show view



Towards Opacity, 2020
Show view

Left:
Google Images search entry: Production;
Device: iPhone SE (A1723); Display aspect
ratio 16:9, 2019
Oil on Linen
213 x 120 cm

Google Images search entry: Should;
Device: iPhone SE (A1723); Display aspect
ratio 16:9, 2019
Oil on linen
35.5 x 20 x 3 cm

Google Images search entry: Splitting;
Device: iPhone SE (A1723); Display aspect
ratio 16:9, 2019
Oil on linen
35.5 x 20 x 3 cm

Google Images search entry: Mirror;
Device: iPhone SE (A1723); Display aspect
ratio 16:9, 2019
Oil on Linen
213 x 120 cm

Southwest window facade (Cropped view), Gallery 354, Right:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018 Shadow over granite floor, Ancestor Figure
Inkjet print on Somerset printmaking paper, (1979.206.1561), Gallery 354, Metropolitan
aluminum frame
30.5 x 20.3 cm each Museum of Art (detail), 2018
Photogravure (print and ghost print)

Diptych: 29 x 38.4 cm each

Shadow over granite floor, Ancestor Figure (1979.206.1561),
Gallery 354, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2018
Photogravure (print and ghost print)
Diptych: 29 x 38.4 cm each
Edition of 3 (+2 AP)

Vikram Divecha

Beirut-born, Mumbai-bred, Vikram Divecha works between New York and Dubai. He holds an MFA in Visual
Art from Columbia University (2019) and is currently a participant of the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study
program (2019-20). Divecha’s projects often bring invisible structures into plain view, to raise questions about
agency, ethics and value. This he arrives at by challenging the nature and modes of artistic production. By
pushing the means of production into a social realm Divecha’s projects turn into sites for new relationships -
where authorship and aesthetics are questioned, while agency gets shifted. Meaning making is not limited to the
reception of the artwork but emerges within the social processes of artistic production itself. Divecha has come
to define this conceptual and collaborative approach around what he calls 'found processes’ - those forces and
capacities at work within state, social, economic and industrial spheres. Working with available material, space
and labour Divecha attempts to realign the social and urban systems we inhabit by introducing alterations and
interventions. Disrupting maintenance rigor with vernacular gestures, Beej (2017) activates the potential for farming
amongst Sharjah’s municipal gardeners. Delaying a train in Paris by 5 minutes was an artistic gesture Divecha
orchestrated for Train to Rouen (2017) that questions our relationship with time, light, and the railway industry.
For Warehouse Project (2016) Divecha bartered the exhibition space with a trading company to re-contextualize
the ebb and flow of goods, allowing the market’s hand to govern the aesthetic output. His ongoing documentary
Veedu (2016) examines the influence of Gulf architecture in Kerala by closely following the design exchanges
between an architect and an Indian client over AutoCAD renderings. His recent inquiry extends to museum
display, which has led Divecha to propose a ambitious light intervention at the MET for his work titled Gallery 354
(2019). The changes he initiates are not simply injected into a system and then showcased, rather, Divecha's
are slow processes, capable of enduring well beyond the time/space framework of what is 'exhibited', in some
cases generating sustained social associations. Despite interacting with largely invisible systems, his works
have a definite materiality and formal rigour. Divecha’s engagements translate into site-specific works, public art,
installations, video, photography and drawings. 

Exhibitions include: Towards Opacity, Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai (2020); Second Hand, Jameel Arts
Center, UAE (2019); Living Room: UIT (Use it together), ISCP, New York (2019); Who Are We Now?, Land Art
Mongolia 5th Biennial, Mongolia (2018); Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play, National Pavilion UAE, 57th
Venice Biennale (2017); Tamawuj, Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017); Co-Lab, Louvre Abu Dhabi, UAE (2017); Binary
States India-UAE, Kochi (2016); Warehouse Project, Alserkal Commission, (2016); DUST, Centre for Contemporary
Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw (2015); Accented, Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah (2015). Recipient of the 2014
Middle East Emergent Artist Prize, he has also created projects for The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture's public art
commission InVisible in 2014.

David Markus

David Markus is an interdisciplinary writer and educator. His work focuses on representations of dwelling and
domesticity in late-capitalist contexts, social practices in contemporary art, and the conflict between intimacy and
artistic ambition in twentieth-century literature, art, and film. His articles and reviews have appeared in publications
such as Art in America, Frieze, Art Journal, Art Papers, and Flash Art. He teaches in the Expository Writing
Program at New York University.

Vikram Divecha would like to thank:

Dr. Maia Nuku, Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Associate Curator for Oceanic Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Department of Africa,
Oceania, and the Americas; Daniel Kershaw, Senior Exhibition Designer, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Andrzej Poskrobko, Swapna Kurup, Paul
Seung Lee Chang, Xiaochuan Tian, Bradley Pitts, Matthew Buckingham, Sarah Sze, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Sara Vanderbeek, Clifford Owens, Annette
Hur, Susanna Koetter, Rachel LaBine, Esteban Jefferson, Stipan Tadic, Patrick Bayle, Henry Anker, Yifan Jiang, Tomas Vu-Daniel, Cara Lynch,
Yushan Lui

IVDE team - Isabelle van den Eynde, April Morais, Zeina Abedarbo, Nalin Nimal Premathilaka, Romelle Luna, Naimat Ullah

Special thanks to Alserkal Avenue for Studio Residency space

Gallery 354 audio narration bibliography:
- Jamon Halvaksz (2008) Photographing Spirits: Biangai Photography, Ancestors, and the Environment in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea,
Visual Anthropology, 21:4, 310-326, DOI: 10.1080/08949460802156342
- Geoffrey Batchen (2000), Each Wild Idea, USA, The MIT Press

Published by Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde
on the occasion of the exhibition
Towards Opacity
14 January - 14 March 2020
Photography by Vikram Divecha and April Morais
Text by David Markus
Images courtesy of the artist and Gallery Isabelle
van den Eynde

Unit 17, Alserkal Avenue
Street 8, Al Quoz 1
PO Box 18217
Dubai, UAE
T +971 4 323 5052
F +971 4 323 6761
E [email protected]
www.ivde.net

© 2020 Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde.
All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in
any manner without the written permission of the artist and Gallery
Isabelle van den Eynde.

Exhibit #1 / 2020