Tick tock: This artist illustrates faces on table clocks

Adman-turned-artist Yayati Godbole’s first show includes table clocks as exhibits to depict a mind oscillating between the past and future

Mumbai

Artwork from artist Yayati Godbole’s exhibition

Adman-turned-artist Yayati Godbole’s first show includes table clocks as exhibits to depict a mind oscillating between the past and future.

Step inside Worli’s Gallery Art & Soul and you can spot 60 variations of faces, on canvas, paper and on table clocks. It’s a face with a large nose, wide, open eyes, and a blank expression. Minute lines dot the face, to reflect the passage of years; it’s almost reminiscent of modern artist Jogen Chowdhury’s cross-hatching technique of overlapping lines. At times, an unsettling shadow face emerges from the portrait. Flowers and fishes float around and geometric lines divide the portrait.

Paintings from the exhibition

The artworks are part of Dubai-based artist Yayati Godbole’s first solo exhibition, The Accidental Abstinence of the Now. In it, Godbole delves on the mind’s inability to focus on the present as it ponders over the past or the future. “The fish and the flowers symbolise the creative potential of the present moment that is not seized when we are lost in thought. The multiple faces represent changes in a person’s psyche that happen over time, while the intersecting planes show how the past and present meet,” he says.

The undeniable highlights are 24 table clocks, illustrated with glass markers and automobile paint. Procured from Dubai, Godbole chose the timepieces as his canvas because of their association with passing time.

Artist Yayati Godbole (Photo: Kunal Patil/HT)

Godbole has two decades of experience in advertising, during which he developed an interest in psychology. “I analysed customer behaviour (for campaigns) and it led me to focus on other aspects related to the mind, be it memories or distractions,” says the 47-year-old, who spent nine months working on the collection.

Art has always been a passion for Godbole, an alumni of the Sir JJ School of Art. “Even when I was working in advertising, I would paint on weekends to prepare myself to face the week ahead,” he says.

Time travel

What: The Accidental Abstinence of the Now is on display till August 31, from 10am to 7.30pm

At: Art & Soul, 11 Madhuli, Shivsagar Estate, Worli

Call: 2496 5798