Characters from art and history communicate with city folk in Schon Mendes' mammoth paintings

It's impossible to read the multiple stories that spring forth from a Schon Mendes' larger-than-life canvas in a jiffy. The nine 6ftx5ft paintings at his solo debut titled Cameos of a city at Sakshi Gallery, Colaba, are each labyrinth pockets of discordant subplots, meant for scrutiny only at a leisurely pace.

"I depict how, in a city, the life of one person is interlinked with that of another, and as members of society, all that we do influences others who are part of this whole," says the soft-spoken 29-year-old, who took three months to complete each painting. The MS Baroda alumni was tutored under professors, artists Rekha Rodwittiya and Surendran Nair, from whom, he says, he's learnt the strict discipline of long hours of studio practice, an awareness of one's socio-political reality, and that art and life are inter-connected and inseparable.

Multiple subplots

The subplots on this canvas reflect a bustling cityspace, where Mendes knocks off walls and ceilings so the viewer is privy to subjects from reality, mythology, art history and everyday life occupying spaces such as a church, hospital, house, balcony. He does this to indicate how differing situations and mindsets coexist in contradiction: the comical – the fall of a Mughal character becomes a literal Freudian slip, the grim – on going surgery in the ICU to the familial – twelve people dining metaphorises the biblical Last Supper, and more so on one canvas.

Connectors

To prevent the confusion, he strategically places scene-connectors: either one character straying into the next – a salwar-clad woman perched on a ladder to watch a dragon embattle a Mughal character, or long, winding pathways that slash the canvas in the form of conveyor belts, railway tracks, highways. Even the above painting has a long scroll chronicling birth and death, good and evil, joy and sorrow, with a Tree of Life progressing to a coffin meeting a fresh grave.

Characters from art and history 

The above painting, for instance, posits a calendar of 12 gods and godmen. In it, there's a poster image of a Gulliverian bodybuilder in a T-shirt and kaccha filmed weightlighting by Lilliputian St Thomas (from a Caravaggio painting), Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, Akbar. "Characters from art history find their way into my paintings in a rather spontaneous manner, often in contexts different from their original, sometimes re-interpreted in a contemporary situation." says Mendes. Pockets of subplots frame this main-stage imagery – public waiting at a bus-stand and restuarant, others in transit on an escalator and in a train, and solitary characters on hospital beds, at a desktop and playing watchman on a terrace. "Bodybuilding is become a preoccupation of the youth, a new religion. But in the meantime, life in the city goes on," says Mendes.

Small paintings

Mendes' keen eye for minutiae is a result of his travels across towns and cities that have found their way into the sketch book he carries at all times, a trait particularly noticeable in the 10 small-format works in the same exhibition. People he's made acquaintances with the flower seller, the watch repairer, the newspaper vendor, tailor, mechanic and grocer — pose for him in their workspace. "The kind of bizarre stories that I've heard while waiting at the barber's shop... some of them I have fleshed out in much the same way, where there is a continuous unfolding of narratives around the central element, witnessing the human pyramid at the Gokulasthami celebrations in Mumbai or the aromas and flavours in a sweet shop in Baroda..."