Gush
by Bhavna Meta
Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA
through January 3rd
article by Cathy Breslaw
A Labor of Love
The Parker Gallery at the Oceanside Museum is a small
contained space set apart from the other second floor spaces at the museum but
when you arrive into Bhavna Meta’s exhibition Gush you are rewarded and comfortably transported
to a dazzling richly hued and joyful array of visual delights that take you to
another space and time. The genesis of
this show was a set of 24 community workshops Mehta organized in North County
San Diego where participants were asked to create patterns of all kinds and
Mehta taught them skills in hand produced paper cutting with various tools
provided. A large body of art created by the participants is on rotating view with
a small video screen in the exhibition space.
Through her experiences with participants and their creations, Mehta
developed the ‘story’ she wanted to tell in her exhibition. Gush,
the title of the exhibition, directly interpreted in the dictionary as
‘free flow and an effusive display’ perfectly describes the multitude of
bright, multi-colored cut-out patterned strands of varying lengths pouring out
of gray geometrically formed cylinders hanging from the walls in various places
within the room. Also featured are four
large rectangular works that serve as ‘windows’ that are then framed with brightly colored
Indian patterns that capture within them in 3-D space, scenes of black cut-out
figures doing various tasks and taking on differing perspectives and actions.
These more representational forms of people and activities leave a lot up to
the imagination to discern and describe. Reminiscent of Henri Matisse’s paper
cuts he created in later life, Mehta’s exhibition is definitely a labor of love
– as we can only imagine how long it took to create the multitude of paper-cut
pieces included in this show.
