Pinocchio and the human heart

There is a print in which I got two random pictures to talk to each other in a meaningful way. The randomness was not really just like throwing two completely unrelated things together into one frame, because they were things that we know are related if we come from a particular generation and a particular culture.

I’m talking about Pinocchio and the human heart. If your mom or granny read you the book at bedtime when you were a child, or if you saw the original Disney movie then you would know that Pinocchio is a puppet that desperately wants to be a real boy, he wants a heart. But he has to go through some hectic shit to get it. Something he shares with the Tin man in the Wizard of Oz. So, by combining Pinocchio’s face and his heart in one picture I made a statement about what completes us, in a particular age-group. It’s our collective memory. Many people, from diverse backgrounds, won’t get it but still I have to make my statement.

I’m glad if it’s imbued in a small amount of mystery, because I believe that artworks should defy easy description if they are to rise above the type of PR rhetoric that does little more than help magazine writers save time on deadline.

I want the artwork by Fringe to grip you, to be a feature of your life without being a forceful presence that says ‘make way for me and don’t allow space for anything else.’ I want my artwork to be a portal to your imagination, and I’m ecstatic if it becomes a family treasure that is passed on to future generations.

Like Pinocchio, art should have a heart and earn it through adventure. It should be an addition to life that helps us understand who we are at the time we view it. I hope it can supersede the banality of real day-to-day issues. I am happy if I hear, via the grapevine, that the most invested-in modern pieces have made way for multiple works that have been created, now, by artists who are colorful adventurers. All over the Internet there are pleas for art collectors to ‘invest in living artists’.

As one of those I really don’t want to seem arrogant. But I am here on the planet, trying to eke a living, and the idea of acquiring an artwork that is just a safe investment, and nothing else, is antithetical to the idea of experimentation and adventure in art making. And art owning.

Please don’t deny us all the best part of journey.