atul bhalla

My work is an attempt to understand water. 
How I perceive it, feel it, eat it, drink it, wash in it, bathe in it, swim, wade, sink or will drown in it. 
How I drench, soak, douse, moisten, quench, dilute, dampen, cleanse, or purify.
How I excrete tears, sweat, or urine. 
How it falls, drops, floods, inundates, levels, buoys, lashes, gushes, swells and ripples. 
How it exists as fog, mist, cloud, steam, snow, sleet, rain, or puddle. 
How it contains or is contained.
How it is dammed or bottled.

The objects displayed at the exhibition are unique casts of the space water occupies within a given body. The spaces/ bodies have been chosen from ‘spaces’ used to fill, transport, keep or store water. Each non duplicated space is achieved by using the object as a cast itself .
Each of the smaller aquariums [12 x12x18 in] were filled with water to a same level then the object was ‘immersed within’. Different immersions give different levels of water within the aquariums. The water pressure pushes out the air trapped within the sand till it is stabilized. Leaving little bubbles [spaces within spaces within spaces ] on the surface of the objects which do not go away if the object is not disturbed physically.
The objects may seem as ‘water displayed within water’.
Also water is the element which binds the object.
The photographic works are performative, and have been shota little before Wazirabad barrage in Delhi. This is the place where the river Yamuna enters Delhi for its 22Km sluggish run to Okhla , the border at Uttar Pradesh. 

ATUL BHALLA