The Ascent of Avinash Deshpande (Bicarbonates)

In his drawing-based project Bicarbonates, Sarnath Banerjee explored the idea of imperfect twins, working only with diptychs of various scale and formations to illuminate various aspects of the society he inhabits. Using almost-identical pairs of drawings he explores the idea of reverse animation, where the tiniest of interventions in the second drawing create a large comment but no progression in time, going against the very grain of animation. In Bicarbonates, the slightest change in the frame, rather than creating movement, creates an eerie stillness. Perhaps a stillness craved by the citizens of a speed-boat nation, an active stillness that needs to be carved out of a hyper kinetic world where arresting motion is every bit as hard as producing it. Morphologically, the project vaguely resembles the age-old pictorial game of ‘spot the difference’. This series of works is a radical departure from his earlier work, in which he subverted both the language of animation and graphic story telling. In this work, the artist refers to an old proposition put forth by the great Turkish fool and wise-man, Mulla Nassiruddin to a drunk “[...] you cannot prevent yourself from falling, but when you do fall, fall gracefully.”