Curator : Shristi Sainani

Dates : 9th December 2022 — 13th January 2023
Host : Gallery Twenty Seven, Mattancherry, Kochi

Artist : Bose Krishnamachari, Harsha Durugadda, Urna Sinha, Jitha Karthikeyan, Abeer Khan, Upendranath T.R, Tahireh Lal, Sajan Mani, George Martin P J, Ajinkya Patekar, Neelima Nath, Manish Modi, Santhosh Sadrak, Pranshu Thakore, Siva Sai Jeevanantham.

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Gallery Twenty Seven is pleased to present a group show, titled ‘Hopscotch’, presenting fifteen
exceptional artists : Bose Krishnamachari, Harsha Durugadda, Urna Sinha, Jitha
Karthikeyan, Abeer Khan, Upendranath T R, Tahireh Lal, Sajan Mani, George Martin P J,
Ajinkya Patekar, Neelima Nath, Manish Modi, Santhosh Sadrak, Pranshu Thakore and Siva
Sai Jeevanantham.

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Title of the exhibition, taking from the timeless children’s street game — Hopscotch, looks at
juvenescence through a lens of nostalgia. The audience is looked at as young protagonists thrusted
into a preternatural plane of existence, cast among an odd array of objects and scenes that are
almost anomalistic. Juxtaposing the fantastical alongside what may be seem ordinary from afar,
there is a gesture towards revealing of subliminal desires and dreams.

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Hopscotch nudges the audience towards an honesty that comes along with nativity, while touching
on a parallel absurdity, commotion and eccentricity. With known consciousness of losing the
essence of oneself to the growing pace of age, the exhibition aims at directing the viewer towards a
child-like visual frenzy intertwined with transience, amusement, exuberance and multiplicity of
histories. There is a shift in perspective that would allow for a redefinition of basic imagery and
perception.

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Lost in an adult world full of arbitrary rules, one could easily embrace the uncertainty as their own.
Looking briefly towards text by the Franco-Romanian surrealist Tristan Tzara (Volt, 1924-25) :

The inclined towers the oblique skies
The cars descending into the void of roads
The creatures along the country lanes
Branches covered with hospitable virtues

With leaf-shaped birds at their crowns
You walk but another walks in your footsteps
Distilling her spite through fragments of memory and math
Enveloped by a robe almost mute the clotted sound of capitals.

Through a diverse range of media, the presentation calls on scapes of color, audio bits
deconstructing sounds found in grounds of play, also to look showcase whimsy of characters in
toons that empathize with (in)necessity of contemporary bustle. The presentation re-examines the
world, utilizing a bygone to explore reality.

The show runs from the 9th December 2022 — 13th January 2023, parallel to the Kochi
Biennale. Hopscotch is curated by Shristi Sainani.